


Out of the Ashes

by twiningsfortwo



Series: Sanctorium [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twiningsfortwo/pseuds/twiningsfortwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I don't own jack. Or Sanctuary. But surely you knew that. No monies are being made at all by anything even remotely like this ever so don't sue me, okay?</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own jack. Or Sanctuary. But surely you knew that. No monies are being made at all by anything even remotely like this ever so don't sue me, okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It must be shock, Nikola decided, that encouraged such a clinical response. Not that he wasn't clinical at the best of times, but when it came to the Sanctuary, which stood before him, consumed by flames, he found that he had grown... attached. To the Sanctuary, it's inhabitants, it's hijinks, and most of all, to its keeper...

Smoke rose in huge angry plumes, acrid and metallic, spiralling upward in huge drafts. The flames were out of control, and quickly eating away at the blackened carcass of the old building. Timbers crackled madly, sparks flying, escaping to freedom from the disaster, like tiny fireflies flickering out. It was carnage. Utter ruin. It was heart wrenching – in the most curious way.

It must be shock, Nikola decided, that encouraged such a clinical response. Not that he wasn't clinical at the best of times, but when it came to the Sanctuary, which stood before him, consumed by flames, he found that he had grown... attached. To the Sanctuary, it's inhabitants, it's hijinks, and most of all, to its keeper.

_Helen._

“Go, quickly,” she had said. And while his lips still tingled from her kiss, he watched the sturdy steel-enforced door slide down, locking her in to the lab. That was the last thing he'd heard her say, before the Sanctuary went up in flames. Her along with it.

But she's Helen Magnus, he reasoned. She and Death were old hats at their game of Cat and Mouse. Helen Magnus did not simply blow up. She would emerge from the rubble in a miraculous fashion, with dust in her hair and a small smile on her face. Nikola's breath caught in anticipation. She would. She must. Who would make sure that Nikola didn't die in some sordid scheme of his? Or keep him from spending all his money on a rare Chardonnay? Who would intervene when he and dear Heinrich were at each others' throats about the obvious power efficiency flaws in the designs of Henry's latest stunners?

Nikola turned to Henry, noting for the first time since they had scrambled out of the burning wreckage that he had a nasty-looking burn across his nose and cheeks, his eyes looking uncharacteristically dull. His clothing was charred and badly torn. Nikola wasn't faring much better, though most of the damage had already healed due to his abilities. His clothing, however, was heinously dusty and there were more than a few lost buttons and tears in his pants and jacket.

He felt just as dull as Henry did. An awful, lurching feeling dropped the pit of his stomach somewhere between his knees, as he began to realize: she wasn't stepping out of the flames, like an Angel of Abnormal Vengeance. He held his breath, his eyes burning with more than smoke --

She wasn't appearing.

They exchanged horrified glances. Helen Magnus was gone.

.oOo.

Nikola jackknifed into a sitting position, ripped from sleep from his distressingly familiar nightmare, chest heaving as if starved for air. Like he often did. Nikola scoffed, bitterness creeping into his mood. Yet again, it seemed like it was going to be one of those days. The sun filtered in through the slat blinds, barely illuminating his frankly shameful surroundings. The very fact that he was reduced to this, and had been for six months, grated on his last nerve. Some dull apartment with little more than a crotchety fridge which hummed like a Wookie singing opera, and the wrecked laminate counter that fell victim to a failed experiment, was not what he had in mind for his seemingly unending life.

But being on the lam did have its advantages. First and foremost was that those imbeciles from the aptly-slurred SCIU had no idea that he was alive, much less living right under their noses. Secondly, this pit of an apartment was the last place that SCIU would look for all of Nikola's innovations, when he finally succeeded in re-appropriating them. Retrieving them. Fetching. Un-borrowing.

If there was one thing that really got his blood boiling, it was the theft of his research. Those primates had to be congratulated for their good taste (it was his work after all,) but the execution and fumbled, mangled, abusive use his genius showed them for the cretins they were.

Nikola knew he was just being petty. It had been six months, after all. Six months to stew over his failure, to see the fallout of the Death Nodes. (At first, Henry's name had ruffled his feathers, but upon reflections, it seemed as good a name as any. Spending time with the wolfboy had clearly rubbed off on him.) He had plenty of time to see where he'd gone wrong, and though he was loathe to admit it, it was more than a few steps before his greedy acceptance of employment at SCIU. The bastards.

Nikola shook the remnants of the nightmare from his head before it would get too much of a foothold in his disposition. There were things to do, appearances of coolness and power to maintain, shipments to ransack, and mayhem to cause. He'd slowly, quietly, gathered a good deal of intel from SCIU on the state of his technology. It seemed today was a golden opportunity to re-appropriate some of his stuff. In fact, if he didn't act now, it would take Herculean effort to fetch the rest. Forget Herculean, it would take a Magnus-level (Magnian, Nikola mused,) effort to get them back.

A darkness so deep he forgot to breathe swept through Nikola like a tidal wave. Helen...

Six months was not enough time to erase the pain of losing his best friend. She'd asked him to trust her, to follow her lead... That was his biggest failing. He sealed off the Main Lab, on the only woman he had ever truly loved. He should have known that not even Helen Magnus could overcome the force of Caleb and his cronies. In the end, she took him with her, but...

He took in a shaky breath, feeling clammy. He would never admit it, but God, how he had wished he had stayed, wrapped up in her arms. He'd made the jest once that he could die a happy death there, but it was secretly a sober truth. The loneliness he felt was magnified tenfold by the loss of Helen. He'd tried to eradicate that loneliness many times – resurrecting his race, even his ultimate committal to the Sanctuary – but nothing drove the proverbial stake deeper into his heart than the death of Helen. The intoxicating grief tore a strip right out of him, leaving him raw and vulnerable.

“Don't think about that,” he muttered, finding belatedly that he'd already gone through most of his morning routine without noticing. Not a good sign. He grimaced at the tired, pale reflection in the water-flecked old mirror. His umber hair was longer than he liked it, sticking up in odd rebellious spikes. His pale eyes were like slate, weighed down with tell-tale bags. Though his face had not aged, he felt frayed around the edges.

But he'd change that. He'd retrieve his things before SCIU knew what hit them. He'd visit his wrath upon the accursed morons who were responsible for his predicament. For Henry's. For Helen. He'd tear them limb from limb. He'd set fire to the sky and burn up the ocean. And once he got his resources back, he'd start to get nasty.

But first, a shower. (While it was true, science waited for no bath, the public would never see Nikola without looking at least stylishly tousled.) He shed what few clothes he had on and slipped into the old, yet serviceable shower. Setting the dial to somewhere between “hot” and “boil a lobster,” Nikola faced the stream of water, willing himself calm. The ritualistic movements, sliding the utilitarian bar of soap over his long limbs helped centre his mind. He knew the routes of the shipments. And quick trip to see Wolfboy and the Mademoiselle for some components, and he'd be off. Finally, he'd get his revenge.

A lightning-fast _painpleasure_ shot through Nikola's body, surging into his hands, which were quickly becoming claws. _Oh hell,_ he thought, fighting back the feeling before he transformed. He felt sanguine, at the very least, but he made an oath. He hadn't broken it yet, and he would not break it now. Nikola held his breath and counted backwards until everything evened out, and the delicious feeling abated. _I'd best hurry and take my Breakfast,_ he thought.

Water sluiced down the angles of his body, pooling in bubbly swirls around his toes. Steam rose, quickly clouding the shower door and mirror, details fading into a smooth gray. Nikola willed his focus into the plan; tuning out his surroundings like mist over his vision. Three unmarked trucks were arriving at SCIU headquarters in Old City today, along with an armed escort, to take his inventions to a private airport to be shipped somewhere. Once they were gone, they were gone. He would sneak in, grab his research at the very least, prototypes if he could, picking them off as they separated en route. Anything left would burn, he'd be damned if he'd let them keep one ounce of his research by the end of today, his genius made manifest. Any world domination would be on his terms, not theirs.

Though the idea of world domination sounded hollow to his ears. Somehow, it's lost its appeal, now that there wasn't Helen to play the game against. The world felt smaller, less precious, without her in it.

“Focus, Nikola,” he told himself, stepping out of the shower. “Don't think about that.”

Quickly dressing in a burgundy dress shirt, charcoal grey pants and waistcoat, Nikola swept through the apartment collecting the last of his things. He snatched a tiny silver case, engraved with a crest of three crowns surrounding an open book, and popped it open. Inside were ovular, red pills, about the size of a tic-tac. Quickly, Nikola snatched one out of the tin and tossed it into his mouth with the practice of daily consumption. Breakfast. Almost immediately, his mood lightened. Nikola let out a mirthless chuckle. Heinrich called him “hangry” the last time he'd allowed himself to go that long between pills. It was a despicable lynching of language, but Nikola had choked back his laughter anyway.

Yet, it's down to business now, Nikola thought, with a grim set to his face. There was a task to be done.

.oOo.

Helen loved her work, and adored her new Sanctorium, the Hollow Earth Sanctuary, but she did miss sunlight. Yet again, she quietly wished that she wasn't confined to a wide-brimmed hat and enormous, insectoid sunglasses, but it was a necessity, and she didn't complain. It would be a few decades before it would be safe for Helen Magnus, infamous and rather wanted by American authorities, to walk about above ground openly. Faking her death did have the unfortunate side-effect that was the get-up she was wearing. For now, it was hats and glasses, her hair in long loose curls tumbling under the brim. It was better than prosthesis, or nighttime excursions. But it was only a couple of decades. She was a patient person.

Well, most days. Today was proving to not be one of those days. She rounded the corner of Main St., feeling the familiar tension of anticipation and discovery tighten her belly and warm her cheeks. This feeling wasn't unlike her 113 years of “seclusion,” (and Helen used the term loosely and with no small amount of irony.) She constantly had to be in a state of hyperalertness, just in case. Just in case she ran into someone who knew her, or into a major historical event that she couldn't interfere in. Or herself, which had happened on two harrowing occasions. The sensation of memory changing was not a pleasant one – like gravity decided to abandon its law and invert suddenly, or like being plunged upside-down into the sea – and she'd felt those odd effects on both occasions. And, on both occasions, she had made a full retreat.

Of course, the Sanctorium stood as both her greatest achievement, and her greatest hypocrisy. On the one hand, it was a triumph of persistence and ingenuity, hidden on the very edges of Hollow Earth. It was a huge network of large caves, filled with buildings that were of a mixture of Praxian and old British design, housing almost the entire abnormal population of all of the Surface Sanctuaries she once headed. Yet, it was also only possible because she had used time travel : Adam's method had thrown her into the past, and she'd taken advantage, after condemning him for trying to alter the timeline to save his daughter.

It had worked only because this tiny sliver of Hollow Earth had been long abandoned by both the Praxians and the tribes as back-water country; useless strategically and expensive to maintain. It lay mostly forgotten through to the invasion, even. But what made it useless for those who lived (and fell) in Hollow Earth made it ideal for her Sanctorium. It was something like living in an oasis, in the middle of the Sahara. Helen was grateful, every day, for the Sanctorium. Yes, she'd interfered in the time line, but she was careful. Her interferences were almost entirely unconnected with any events that had transpired in history as she knew it. Besides, it didn't matter, because she was able to keep the vow she'd made to her patients, her colleges, and her friends: that no creature, human or abnormal, that came to her for protection would be harmed.

Except for one. But as much as she railed against her butler's choice to get into the belly of the beast, she had to accept that it was just that. His choice. She could only do everything in her power to do right by him, and honour his sacrifice. That's what he would have wanted.

The street felt oddly empty, despite the fact that there were plenty of people milling about, doing their day-to-day business. She wasn't sure what it was, but she felt the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rise. It was unsettling, whatever it was. Something felt wrong. In a well-practiced motion, Helen pulled her gun from its holster, setting it gently into the folds of her voluminous coat. With any luck there would be no need for it, but just to be safe...

Helen tapped her earwig. “Something's not right. Keep alert, everyone.”

“Copy that, Magnus,” came Will's voice, tinny through the receiver.

“You got it, boss,” added Kate.

“Copy that,” Garris chimed in, soft-spoken as always.

“This is givin' me the willies. Too quiet,” said Declan, thick with his accent. He was right, Helen realized. Despite the number of people around, it was hushed. What should be a cacophony of sound and general midday chaos was... dulled, somehow.

Helen gave a sweeping glance of her surroundings, noting anything odd, or out of place: agents, surveillance, traps, escapes. She'd received intel from Abby, who was still working under the SCIU banner to preserve Helen and Will's secret, that they had a shipment of some kind, top secret. Its contents were hidden under layers and layers of red tape that Abby didn't have the authority for. All she knew was that it was being moved to a secure location today, and that only the likes of the Brass above even Addison knew what it was. It could be anything. A weapon, some kind of contraband... but Helen had a suspicion that it couldn't be left alone. Something didn't sit right. It could be an abnormal, chained down on a lab table to be made into a one-creature army.

It could even be Henry. Or Nikola. The idea of either terrified Helen beyond logic. She couldn't find hide nor hair of either of them since the Old City Sanctuary went down six months ago. She was afraid that SCIU had found them, or worse, that the fire had swallowed them whole. If they didn't get clear of the blast, they could have been... But, she told herself, their physiologies could protect them from burns, and accelerate their healing. Nikola's, certainly, and Henry's powers had been growing stronger every day. They could be alive. They must be. She had just enough faith left in her to believe it. If there was a skill they shared beyond their technological savvy, it would be disappearing. She had to have faith.

But that was why they were here. Abby's judgement proved to be canny and sound, and Abby suspected there was more to this shipment than bureaucracy. They'd at the very least keep an eye on the trucks, and intervene if it became clear it was an abnormal taken prisoner, or a weapon that would cause more harm than good. A couple Praxian-tech tracking devices would also come in handy.

Her feeling of unease grew as she glanced at her watch, then back at the crowd. The trucks were late. But why? The sun shone brightly, barely a cloud in the sky. It wouldn't be weather. Nothing appeared to be amiss. Abby hadn't called with a delay. She didn't hear any struggles elsewhere in town.

Though she couldn't hear much of anything, except a strange whispery quality overlaying the murmer of the people. To disguise her loitering, Helen slid into a decorative metal chair on the patio of a cafe, bedecked with summery flowers in herb boxes, and tables with candles in mason jars. She tapped her earwig again. “The target should have been here by now. Could we have missed it?”

“Negative, we've got eyes on the whole area,” Declan replied, his voice sounding tight. Helen grimaced. _They could adjust their positions to--_

A screech of tires interrupted her train of thought.

“Well there's our reason,” Will said, disbelief palpable over the radio. “Oh. Shit.”

“What's going on?” Kate demanded.

Careening around the corner came the truck, the breaks screaming in the odd stillness. Panic began to bubble up in the crowd, half of which stumbled away from the spectacle, the other began pulling out their phones in an attempt to video the truck. It made a mighty jerk, and began to flip.

Helen leaned in, trying to see around the crowd gathering at the edge of the street. It wasn't for her to engage when there were so many people around, she could be recognized (Will had made that abundantly clear.) But nevertheless, she itched to remove her hat and sunglasses, brandish her gun, and join the fray. The truck continued to flip and rolled over once, twice, landing on its roof, smoke leaking from the chassis.

A quick movement attracted Helen's eyes. Very quick. Inhuman quick. A dark shape flitted over the body of the truck, towards the back.

“Something's at the back of the truck,” she said quietly into her earwig. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kate and Garris sneak out onto the street from across the way. Will and Declan couldn't be too far behind, completing the group's triangulation.

“I'm gonna take a better look,” Kate said, quickly disappearing into the throng of pedestrians before anyone could give a yea or nay. Helen could see Garris' distress from across the street – he wore it in his stance more than his face, but even from here she could see him fight to stay where he is. He sighed with his whole body, shook his head, and slipped into the crowd in attempted pursuit. Helen had a private moment of happiness for Kate. Garris had been so good for her.

The odd silence suddenly lifted, and the sounds of the panicked crowd erupted into full force. Helen jerked back in surprise, as her head protested the sudden noise with an ache in the temples.

“Okay, what was that?!” Will tore out.

“I have no idea. Some kind of auditory cloak?” Helen answered, but she was distracted by the flitting figure again. It whisked away, bigger this time, and a touch slower. Slow enough that, if you knew what to look for, you could see.

Nikola.

“My God,” Helen breathed. But he was already gone.

“Magnus, what's wrong?” Will asked, as he and Declan popped out of an alley two or so blocks down. He cocked his head, as if to include her in his peripherals without being obvious. “Are you alright?”

“Will, Declan, proceed to the next point, time is of the essence. Kate, Garris, check the truck and see if you can get a tracker on it, but for goodness' sake, don't be seen. I thought I saw our third party escape, but I can't be sure. Whatever caused this did it very, very quickly. As soon as you've checked the truck, head to the rendez-vous. I'll meet you there.”

Declan and Will exchanged glances, but didn't hesitate. They turned to go back into the alley. “Magnus?” Will asked, slowing his pace.

“Yes, Will, I'm fine. I'd rather discuss my theory back at the Sanctorium.”

“Copy that,” Declan replied, scooping Will's arm with his and pulling him deeper into the alley they'd just emerged from. Helen cast a quick glance around the patio. No one was paying her any mind, so she took the opportunity to leave. Without a backward glance at the truck, she swept away, mind reeling. She wanted to be away before the police cordoned off the area.

Was it Nikola? Or was her mind simply playing tricks on her? She had been just thinking about him, after all. Whatever it was, it moved far too quickly for her to really see. Vampires were not the only abnormals that had superhuman speed. She shook her head. Wishful thinking. There was work to be done.

Case in point, Helen thought, as distant sirens echoed in the tall buildings. And they were quickly growing louder. As if on cue, her earwig chirped.

“The police are on their way, ETA four minutes,” Will said, “Kate, Garris, you guys need to get out now if you're not already.”

“Kate, please, come on,” Garris urged. Helen wasn't surprised – Kate was strong-willed, and a little reckless. In an odd way, Kate reminded Helen of Ashley, and while no one would ever replace her, Kate did somehow ease a little of her pain from losing her daughter. Even after all these years, it hurt to think about Ashley. The guilt was still there, but a hundred years had faded it into a scar, instead of the fresh wound it once was, and was for a long time.

Helen continued on her way, trusting that Kate wouldn't linger too long. The crowd was thickening, the constant noise of chatter began building. There was a shout, a loud pop, and an angry _whoooooosh_ as the truck exploded, flames quickly eating up the remains. She whirled around, scanning for Kate and Garris.

The crowd erupted into screams.

“Kate! Garris!” Will called, “Get out of there now!”

Helen held her breath, searching desperately for her two charges. She felt a terrible tension ratchet up her spine.

Moments passed.

She could barely move.

“Magnus,” came a warning voice, Will, in her earwig. “We're too late.”

“What?” she replied.

“The second truck is late, it should have hit the second checkpoint by now. And I see smoke to the south-east.”

“Dammit!” Helen cursed. “Alright, clearly we've got a competitor here. Everyone to the rendez-vous. Now.” She took one last look. Kate... Garris...

Sirens screamed around the corner and Helen turned and walked as quickly as she could toward the next street. There was an odd static-y noise on the comms. Her brow furrowed.

“... just ... -ppened?”

Helen's hand flew to her earwig as she hurried on, turning at the next street and checking over her shoulder. Cars were slowing in reaction to the commotion, she could slip through the traffic and get to the other side without wasting any time.

“Kate, Garris, please respond!” she said, before stepping into the street.

More static, interspersed with words, coloured with sass. “... are res- ... are you freaking ...”

“Kate! Would y-- ...” Even through the static, Helen could hear the exasperation in Garris' voice.

Helen smiled. They were fine. She paused to let a red SUV drive past before hurrying to the other side of the street, letting out a sigh of relief. She allowed the distractions around her to fall away. Clearly there was something amiss here, and she wanted the calm of her office and a cup of Earl Grey to think it through. She'd never come across that odd effect before, that blanketing of sound. Was it an ability of an abnormal she'd never encountered? Was that what had fled the truck before it exploded? Did one come to break out another? And if they attacked two trucks, it was very likely that the third would go up in flames any moment, and much faster than she and her team could get to it. No, she had to get out with what data she had and think it through.

Yes, the sooner they reconvened the better. The sooner they could combine experiences, the sooner they could get to the bottom of the whole thing.

.oOo.

Helen sat back in her chair in her Sanctorium office. It was very much like her previous one, with less of the knick-knacks and mementos. She'd spirited away a few things here and there, as many as she thought she could get away with, without tipping off the others to the imminent change, but there was little of her many, many years in this room. It wasn't so bad, though. There was a lot of let go of, and this was her new start. It was a wide, open room full of books on shelves, a couple of couches around a low coffee table, and a large space for her desk, just like the old one. Yet instead of being littered with papers and oddments, it was covered in bits of Praxian technology, in a begrudging update from analogue.

One area of her desk was cleared, however. She tapped the surface of the smooth, slick table, activation several icons. Her console flashed up before her eyes, projecting a small interface made of a series of symbols and circles. Quickly navigating through the menus, she found her way to Abby's message. Her hand hovered over the pale blue hologram. Was she grasping at straws? Could she have missed something in the message that could explain what had gone on today? Why hadn't she sent another? If not to her, why not to Will?

As if on cue, she heard a tap from her doorway. Even though much of the rest of the Sanctorium had the appearance of Praxian tech, her office door was a near replica. It made her feel at home. Helen glanced up, and nodded at Will to come in. He was still in his tactical gear, the black harness hanging loosely as though he'd pulled at it to let in some cool air. His lean form had bulked a little from all the rescue and retrieval missions, over which the dark waterproof jacket fit like a glove. The material was a Praxian find – a subtly shifting matte fabric which took on the general palette of its surroundings. Her eye slid off of him as he entered the room, sighing affectedly.

“You know, I love Surface runs as much as the next guy, but next time? Can we at least stick around to grab some pop tarts, or something? I miss those things,” Will declared, dropping himself onto the couch with a dramatic flump.

Helen didn't grace his complaint with an answer. “Any word from Abby about what happened today?”

“Nada,” Will replied, “but she's still under the microscope at SCIU. That last tip she gave us put her under a bit too much suspicion.”

“She's alright?”

“Yeah, she can handle herself,” Will loosened the collar of his jacket and settled in. “She was bound to be suspected anyway, given how everything went down.” That was to say, when Will left, everyone was suspicious. Abby held on to her position by the skin of her teeth.

“But I'm sure she'll get in touch soon,” he added. Helen nodded, letting her terminal go into sleep mode. She picked up her teacup, a pale yellow with buttercups printed across the side and saucer, and stood to join Will on the couch.

She settled in beside him, and set her tea on the low table. She surveyed her protege for a moment, taking in his weariness, the sense of discomfort, and his tight shoulders. He spread out on the couch comfortably, but was still guarded.

She let the moment pass. If Will needed more time to talk about whatever was bothering him, that was alright with her. Instead, they sat next to each other in companionable quiet. There wasn't much point in chatting about what needed to be chatted about until everyone arrived, and they were likely due any moment.

One by one, they all arrived, each looking like they were in varying states of weary. Declan was also still in his tactical gear, though he was as immaculate as usual, not a bit out of place. He lived and breathed in his gear, and it showed. The picture-perfect soldier, down to the shine on his boots. The only indication of fatigue was his expression; his brow was pinched and his eyes glassy.

Kate, in great contrast, had stripped down to her undershirt and cargo pants, padding across the floor in her socks. Her pants, which threatened to fall off, were belted precariously to her hips. But despite her devil-may-care appearance, Kate was quicker to smile these days. Her body was open, loose, and relaxed. She no longer oozed attitude in quite the same way, and had grown into an easy grace.

Garris didn't wear the tactical gear. Instead, he wore pieces of Praxian garb, some lifted from Praxian guards, and some of his tribe. Much like the body suits that she, Kate, and Ranna had worn when approaching Kanaan, he had a dark grey one-piece suit, with a black zipper down the front, and a series of crossed cords down the fronts sides. He had a loose scarf wrapped around his head and throat, and otherwise simple boots.

They didn't waste any time. “So three SCIU trucks with some unknown cargo get attacked in quick succession, each truck goes up in flames,” Will began.

“Mazel tov.” Kate said, her lips sliding into a smirk.

Will rolled his eyes, but he couldn't quite fight off his own little smile. “This whole thing seems a bit odd to me. I mean, who knew about these shipments?”

“It sounds like very few did,” Helen answered, “only the top Brass.”

“Right, so we're talking military secrets here. Not easy to intercept. Who, or what, would have had access to the information, and the resources?” Will asked aloud.

“All three trucks went down quickly, I'd say too quickly. I doubt that it's a one-man job. And whoever it was knew exactly where they split apart, just like us,” Declan added. Helen made a mental note to consider an informant, perhaps Abby, or someone else.

Will made a face. “But why didn't they attack all three trucks at the same time? I'm sure someone with the resources to mount this kind of attack would be able to synchronize their efforts, right? But if it was one person, how the hell did they do it?”

Will looked at Helen expectantly. Helen took a purposeful sip of her tea.

“She's got a theory,” Will said with a twist of smile on his face.

Helen tucked her foot behind her ankle. “Whatever it was, it had to be fast. Very fast. I saw something, humanoid I think, though it was hard to tell from that distance. A blink of an eye and I'd have missed it. When it left...” she trailed off. It wasn't hopeful thinking, was it?

Every eye in the room was on Helen. Kate was the first to break. “When it left?” she prompted.

Helen set her teacup down. “I couldn't be sure. It was barely a moment.”

“Spill it, Magnus,” Will said, leaning in.

Helen tipped her head as if to say what the hell, why not? “I could have sworn it was Nikola.”

Kate's eyebrows shot up in a valiant attempt to reach her hairline. Declan shifted uncomfortably. Will cocked his head to the side; a clear sign that he was entering his observation-mode. Helen blinked to pull herself together. “Again, I couldn't be sure. Whatever, or whoever, attacked those trucks did it with inhuman speed, and we do know that this is a vampiric trait.”

Will looked her in the eye, an expression of deep consideration etched into his brow. He inhaled, and began “Magnus--”

“I know how it sounds, Will. I'm simply saying that this is what I might have seen. The question we should be asking ourselves is why were the trucks were attacked in the first place? What were they transporting, and is it a danger to the Sanctorium?”

Will sat back into his spot on the couch. He was disengaging; whatever it was that he was considering, clearly her claim had affected it. Tenting his fingers, he touched his elbows to his knees and fell into silence. The others, though, seemed non-plussed.

Declan crossed the room, his boots making soft clacks on the floor. “There wasn't much left of the trucks to get much of a sense as to what they were holding, by the time we got to the second and third. But so far as you saw, there was only one creature near the truck? It didn't break something out?” he asked.

“Not that I could tell,” she replied, “I saw something flit towards the truck when it was prone, then away before it exploded.” She surveyed her friends from over her teacup, taking a sip. Kate stood with Garris, his arms loosely circling her from behind, hands clasped around her belly. Declan's eyes had gone glassy again, though he stood tall and proud. “Kate, I take it that you never got a tracker on the truck?”

Kate's eyebrow raised. “Well, no, but what would we be tracking? The bits of truck that got swept up by the street cleaner?” Kate ignored the gentle tug reminding her to be polite.

“Not at all,” Helen took another sip, her tea beginning to cool now that her cup was almost empty. “I just wanted to be sure that no one from SCIU investigating the incident would find any of the Praxian technology there. If they did, I suspect they would have reason to believe that Praxis still existed, or that the tribes had returned.”

Kate nodded her understanding. “We got close enough to the truck to see that it was pretty busted. The back door looked like it had been ripped off, no blast damage on the inside until the whole thing went up.”

“What contents were left seemed odd,” Garris added for the first time, his slit-eyes gleaming. “Pieces of your computers, devices of sorts. Weapons, maybe.”

“Yeah, it was weird,” Kate added, looking up over her shoulder at her lover for confirmation.

“What kind of technology?” Will asked, finally snapping out of his inner-world. He leaned in again, and Helen found herself mirroring. Even Declan stopped pacing and zeroed in.

“I dunno, we only had a couple of seconds before it all went to shit. Small stuff, big stuff, it looked like it was Surface, though,” Kate said. “No glyphs or freaky white bug-bots.”

Helen stood, leaving her teacup on the coffee-table. SCIU was transporting bits of technology? What on earth was this all about? But if it were new technologies, then something was made certain. If it had to do with weapons technologies, there was someone she knew who could combat it, if he was still alive. It was time to find out what had befallen her foster son.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen stood, leaving her teacup on the coffee-table. SCIU was transporting bits of technology? What on earth was this all about? But if it were new technologies, then something was made certain. If it had to do with weapons technologies, there was someone she knew who could combat it, if he was still alive. It was time to find out what had befallen her foster son...

Nikola groaned as he practically fell through the door into Henry's tiny basement apartment. His hand was glued to his shoulder, his arm wobbling around dangerously. He took in the familiar surroundings: the television murmured quietly in the background, casting eerie shapes on the wall from the room opposite, the pale blue curtains that barely kept out the light, the old, tattered couch in the living room just beyond the doorway, the various bits of wire and gizmos scattered across the solid kitchen table. The late-day sun filtered through the curtains, casting a serene sort of light through the tiny space.

Blood dripped onto the dollar-store welcome mat. Oops. A grimace of pain twisted Nikola's face. He waited.

“Don't mind me, I'm just bleeding all over your entryway over here,” he announced into the living room, looking around expectantly for a response.

There was a shuffle, a shout, and a loud crash. Jumbled voices suddenly filled the room, which looked a little hazy. In fact, Nikola felt a little... woozy. His head spun. Rather suddenly, Henry and Erika appeared in the doorway. They froze at the sight of him.

“Nikola!” “Tesla!” “Good lord, what happened?” “Did you get your stuff?” “What? look at him! Of course he didn't--” “News is all over th-- what did you do to your arm?” “Henry!” “What? I'm just sayin', it's Tesla we're t--” “Don't you even start, look at the man!”

“Children, please. No fighting,” Nikola said tersely, yet inwardly he was pleased. Erika almost knocked Henry over when she rushed across the living room to get a better look at his arm. The pain flooded Nikola's vision almost as soon as she placed her hands on it to get a better look. He bit down on his transformative reaction.

“Nikola, good lord, what did you do this time?” Erika asked, shifting Nikola's hand. Underneath was an enormous severance, straight to the bone. “Oh my God!”

“Man! What the hell?” Henry shouted, starting a little.

“Henry, the first aid kit,” Erika said, straightening and immediately becoming Dr. Myers, despite being dressed in an off-shoulder white floral shirt, floating above the beginnings of a pregnant belly, and curve hugging jeans. “Nikola, on the couch.”

“Don't be bossy. I'm fine. Vampire, remember?” But Nikola did as he was told. He sunk into the couch cushions with a moan of pain. Henry quickly disappeared into the tiny kitchen, returning moments later with a large white case with dual clasps. He dropped it on the little coffee table, popped open the clasps, and lifted the lid as Erika immediately rummaged inside for gauze and antiseptic. White flooded his vision as Erika went to work, dressing the wound.

“You know,” she began, her accent a gentle lilt, “A hospital would be better suited to treating this.”

Nikola didn't answer. They had this conversation every time he showed up with a new broken limb or injury that needed tending before his physiology could handle the rest of the healing on its own.

“What happened?” Henry asked, settling down on the floor on the other side of the table, absent-mindedly moving bits of garbage and old dishes out of the way.

“Oh, you know,” Nikola said as breezily as he could manage through the pain, “I zigged when I should have zagged.”

“Dude, no one says that anymore.”

“I happen to have it on good authority that-- oww! Why would you poke there, seriously?”

“If you'd hold still,” Erika gave her best Warning Doctor Look that Nikola began to think she must have learned from Helen, “it wouldn't hurt as much.”

Nikola Tesla was absolutely not in any way _cowed_ by the Warning Doctor Look... Not at all. Not even a little bit. So of course, Nikola held his arm very, very still. He watched Henry make a face that betrayed his own not-fear of his not-frightening girlfriend. Nikola felt a little less ashamed to see that he wasn't the only one who was cautious when the Doctor Disappointed face came out.

Nikola felt a huge jolt and jerked backward. “Son of a--” he bit down on his tongue until it sparked and he tasted _metal/tangy/_ _scarlet/_ _brightness/passion_. He fought down the tremors as Erika hurried to finish tying off the tourniquet. “Sorry,” he muttered, forcing his body back into place.

“You're almost done,” she replied, ignoring Henry who was beginning to hover.

_Distraction. Talking. Yes, good idea,_ Nikola thought to himself. “Well, despite my charmingly haggard appearance and a regrettably ruined shirt, SCIU is now down three trucks full of Tesla originals.”

“Meaning you blew them up,” Henry said, heaving a sigh.

There was a pause. “You make it sound so base,” Nikola replied.

“Yeah, well, there are those who might call that sort of thing 'base'.”

“It was a grand show of my genius and brilliance--”

“Dude, you nearly got your arm sliced off!”

“Yes, but--”

“Arm!” Henry interrupted, gesturing widely to his own, as he flopped it about.

Nikola pressed his lips together. “Yes, well. I found myself on the business end of a rather nasty piece of work. Extra-nasty. I designed it.”

If Nikola hadn't been as fast as he was, it might not have been his arm that was almost severed from his body. Another foot or so to the left, and he would have been completely bisected. Nikola suppressed a snarl at the thought. Clearly those apes had not only helped themselves to the plans to the nodes, but also to his beam blade, not to mention the Blanketer. On the one hand, it was deeply satisfying to use his own invention to retrieve his other inventions, as the Blanketer had not only suppressed any and all enemy frequencies, but SCIU's own frequencies, and even the chatter of the crowd. He essentially waltzed right in, centre stage, letting his presence be masked by the Blanketer. They couldn't turn it off until it was too late. On the other, being on the other end of that blade was not much fun at all.

The only problem now was the weaponization of the beam blade. Which they had somehow made into some kind of beam-blade gun. Despite the pleasure he took from ripping it out of his attacker's hands and silencing the man for good, He couldn't find it in himself to believe that he had found and destroyed the one and only prototype. Not if it launched so well. And if they'd toyed with these, they'd likely attempted others. Surely there were more, which meant Nikola had more work to do.

With a shake of his head, Nikola pulled himself out of his reverie. He looked up to find Erika studying his face, her elegant hands gently touching his shoulder. He was confused for a moment, until he looked down at his arm. It was neatly bandaged, tied off and ready to go. The awkward itch he felt assured him that it was already healing. A tiny smile tugged on her lips. “You alright, Nikola?” she asked.

Nikola almost smiled in return. “Thanks,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Without a word, Henry smiled wryly and pulled himself up off the carpeted floor. He picked up the plates and bits of garbage that he'd stacked off to the side, and brought them over to the kitchen, while Erika slid down more comfortably on the couch. She sank in, the old springs barely able to support even her willowy body. She didn't say a word until Henry grabbed a set of noisy keys from a bright blue decorative bowl near the door. “I'll go grab some dinner, be back in a bit.”

“Oh yes,” Nikola muttered, “leave me alone with Dr. Disgruntled. So much for bros.” He watched Henry's retreating form through the door.

Erika laughed, shaking her head. “Henry knows when to leave things to the experts.”

“With barely a look, I noticed – you have Heinrich very well trained.”

“Sometimes more is conveyed in a look than in words,” she replied, studying his face again. He sighed. She was doing that _thing_ again. It was bad enough to have William profiling him every time he visited the old Sanctuary, but that he could understand, even appreciate. Nikola liked coming across as a threat, and it pleased him sometimes to watch Will categorize the level and immanence of whatever scheme was Nikola's latest. Erika, on the other hand, had no profiling training. She was looking for other things: feelings unvoiced, fears, pain. He found the understanding look on her face to be both annoying and disturbing.

“If you're looking for evidence of soul-crushing loneliness or a broken heart, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed,” he snarked, rolling his uninjured shoulder. But instead of the look of anger he was hoping for, she smiled sadly.

She switched tactics. “So how _did_ it go today? The news reported some odd weather conditions interfering with the broadcast, but I didn't buy that for a moment.”

Nikola snorted. _Weather conditions._ Was that the best they could come up with for the Blanketer? “It seems that their worker monkeys have been busy, turning my designs into working prototypes. Only one was truly troublesome, and you've seen the results of that. Something like a large gun that launches energy blades.”

Erika nodded gently. He took it as a sign to continue. “It seems like my silencing blanket works a bit too well, comparatively. They couldn't get their own frequencies through it, they were completely cut off from each other. The irony of my own technology working for me was...” he turned his face toward her and graced her with his best toothy smile, “delicious.”

“So Nikola Tesla has exacted his revenge against SCIU?” she asked, pulling her hair back, and twisting it into a long rope.

“Oh not by far!” Nikola suddenly found himself standing. “I'm just getting started. They've still likely got other prototypes in that _hive_ of a headquarters. For all I know, the headquarters themselves could have incorporated my own designs, so--”

“So,” Erika interrupted, releasing her hair and giving him a stern look, “you plan to storm the castle on your own, after having almost had your arm sliced off, with full knowledge that they could have more of those weapons stockpiled, ready to turn you into salsa. I understand that this is a huge dent to your pride, but you can't just--”

“This isn't about my pride!” Nikola spat out, the words leaping from his lips before he could stop them.

“Then what is it about?”

Nikola went silent, turning away from her knowing eyes and netting his hands behind his head. He sighed deeply, stepping away, and trying to turn back. “Okay, I walked into that one.” And it wasn't the first time. Erika was very good at corralling his spiralling thoughts, very much like someone else had once done not so long ago.

“Yes, you did.”

“You remind me of Helen,” he said, also before he could stop himself. It was all he could do to stop himself from clapping his hands over his mouth.

She smiled. “So we come to it. And thank you,” she added. “She was... an inspiration, to say the very least. I knew her only for a short time, and I miss her.” Erika stood, and closed the distance between her and her guest. Her genuine warmth all but radiated from her as she continued. “She was a mother to Henry, and I see how her loss affects him every day. Really, I can only imagine what he's gone through, losing her...

“He's strong for me, for our baby, but... I see grief in him. He loved her, in his own way. And I see it in you.”

Nikola concentrated on breathing. He stared at the closed doorway with all the resolution he could muster. He could all but smell the flames and the ash from that night. His hand crept up to hold his injured arm tightly, as if the pain in his flesh would drown out the emptiness. The red hot searing feeling ripped through his muscles.

“Nikola,” she began quietly, “I'm not going to tell you how to deal with your grief. Just that you need to. Understand it for what it is.”

Nikola stepped away, feeling her warmth and concern crowding him. He wasn't sure just when the pair of HAPs had wormed their way into his life, and truly, he was beginning to resent it. The meddling. It wasn't any of her business anyway. He opened his mouth to tell her just that. “It's different.”

Well, he opened his mouth with all the best intentions.

He hazarded a glance at Erika, and immediately regretted it. Sadness was painted across it like a watercolour, all faded tones and gentle washes. The soft blue light diffused through the curtains made for a delicate, if sad, image. She sighed. And waited.

Nikola's mind ground forward at an alarming rate. It _was_ different. Wasn't it? He'd been dealing with it. He'd been taking it out on the organization that, for all intents and purposes, was responsible for her death. He'd begun dismantling it, bit by bit, under the weak disguise of “retrieval.” He'd done the same thing with Johnny Druitt when the Cabal had hurt Helen so by kidnapping and experimenting on her daughter. With Druitt nowhere to be found, Nikola found himself trying to bring the whole organization down on his own. He could tell himself that it was for himself all he wanted, but he knew (and so did Erika, apparently,) that that wasn't entirely true.

“It's different.” Nikola repeated.

“True, Helen was never your mother. She was your friend.”

“She was...” Nikola stopped himself. “She was the last of her kind. And the first.”

Erika nodded understandingly, slipping her hand into his. “You're not alone, Nikola. Henry and I will always be around to keep an eye on you.” A tiny laugh bubbled out of her. “Between the two of us, we'll keep you roughly in line.”

Nikola let a little smirk spread across his own mouth. “I'd love to see you try.”

Erika laughed, and reached up to ruffle his hair. Nikola felt a bit like he was being ironically mothered himself, but allowed the Lycan her moment. “Well I'd best make some tea, Henry should be back soon. We'll need it to counteract whatever monstrosity he calls 'food'.”

 

.oOo.

 

Will surveyed his office through his lashes, feeling oddly empty. He missed Abby, he missed the Surface, he missed the sun. He also sensed that something was afoot. There was a problem at hand, and he felt unable to grasp it. The strange lack of sound, Magnus' reaction to what she thought was Tesla breaking into the SCIU trucks, and the ultimate problem of divining what was in the trucks at all. They couldn't get to the trucks in time before they blew, so he couldn't even have gotten a look. Gotten a sense.

Magnus had that ( _desperate, hopeful, determined denial,_ ) look again—that look that said she would not be swayed on her hope that it really was Tesla who blew up those trucks. Granted, yes, it seemed like a very Tesla thing to do; big and flashy and out-of-the-blue, utterly selfish and with just enough crazy, but... Will didn't want to get his hopes up. If Tesla lived, then couldn't Henry--

But they couldn't find Henry anywhere. It could mean that he was in hiding, or it could mean that he was captured. And Henry was a HAP. SCIU would do anything to have HAPs at Henry's level at their disposal. The power he had, if harnessed... that could change the face of SCIU's war against abnormality.

Will quickly filed that train of thought away. This wasn't the time. He was about to get started into the ever-mounting pile of paperwork on his desk when he looked up, seeing Magnus standing in the door, eyes glittering. He was sure she'd noticed the pensive place his mind had gone to, but he wasn't ready to tackle that yet. Given all that had happened, he still hadn't the time to really decide how he felt about the new Sanctorium.

He didn't trust Magnus, and that proved to be problematic. He wanted to trust her, he truly did. It felt like he was turning his back on family. But the wedge had been driven too far in when she faked her death and left Will so radically out of the loop. He knew the logic, and ultimately understood why she had made the choice that she did, but it didn't change the fact that he felt betrayed and under-appreciated. The power dynamic had never been even, but to find that his mentor, his idol, his surrogate mother, had essentially _used_ him like that... It was a lot to process.

In fact, Will had only been at the new Sanctorium for about a month. And all through that month, she'd kept him so busy that he didn't have time to do _anything_ , much less work through the very conspicuous trust-issues.

He would talk to her about it. Later. Right now, Will had other things to concern himself with. Magnus had that look of hope, which meant another excruciating look for Henry and Tesla.

Of all the people at the Old City Sanctuary, Henry was the one Will missed most. He missed Biggie, he missed Ashley, but Henry was the brother he never had. It was hard to accept that he was very likely gone. _Very_ hard. But Will had done it, and wished that Magnus wouldn't drag him on yet another wild goose chase. If he was alive, he was very well-hidden and completely unlikely to come out.

“Will,” Magnus began, entering the room. His eyes flicked back up from studying the toes of his boots and met hers. She seemed different now. Less invincible. Maybe even tired.

“We have to find Henry,” he stated flatly, feeling almost bored. It wasn't the right tone, though, as his mentor suddenly stood straight and began pacing.

“We don't know that he's gone, Will, I'm sure that he could simply be hiding,” she began, but Will cut her off before she could launch into another tirade.

“We don't know that he's not gone, either.” Will grimaced at his own harsh tone. He tried for something gentler, by continuing. “I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just don't want to see you go through all this again.”

Magnus deflated, and Will felt guilty. As much as he didn't trust her, and didn't want to deal with the disappointment if he found Henry to be dead, gone like Biggie and Ashley and even Clara, he had a sense of duty to Magnus. Filial, perhaps. As Declan might say, in for a penny, in for a pound. He took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, centring his mind on the task ahead.

“Alright,” Will said, tenting his fingers and starting into space, “so we have a truck-load of advanced Surface tech that was heading, likely, to a secure facility outside of the country. Only the high-ups at SCIU knew what the contents were, yet someone knew to ransack them. They were in and out in the blink of an eye, even before we could get close.” He watched Magnus look into her empty teacup, ( _insecure, self-pacifying,_ _second tea in the last hour,_ ) and then place it back onto the saucer in her hand with a gentle sound ( _self-assuring, decision made._ )

“I'll have Declan keep an eye on SCIU for the reaction to the attack, he still has some contacts on the Surface. Maybe something will come to light. In the meantime, we'll see if we can find anything about where Henry and Nikola might be hiding.”

( _Avoidance, tunnel-vision, distrust._ ) Will searched her face for answers, but found none. He sighed. “What's your plan?”

“There's only one thing that would guarantee their attention, if they're looking,” she explained, “which would be to plan a sighting of me to--”

“Magnus,” Will began warningly. He did not like where this was going.

“--draw them out; Will, nothing else would bring them out of hiding--”

“Absolutely not! You're faking dead for a reason!” He suddenly found himself gripping his knees.

“Will, I--”

“No, Magnus. No chance. You'd be risking this entire place, everyone and everything here if you did that.”

Magnus clamped her mouth shut, eyes glimmering ( _pain, guilt, anger_.). It was a low blow, he knew, but necessary to stop that kind of train of thought.

It did give him an idea though. “What about something else? Not a sighting, but a message of some kind, or a situation— a challenge. Neither of them can resist challenges. Something only Tesla or Henry can achieve, even recognize. Something with a Sanctuary signature that no one else would be able to read. The Sanctorium would be safe, and you'd be safe. There'd be no risk of you being seen Up Top.”

He watched her work through the idea in her head, resisting the urge to tent his fingers again.

Magnus' face split into a smile. “I think I know just the thing.”

 

.oOo.

 

It had been a couple weeks since Nikola had shown up in Henry and Erika's apartment, and bled all over their welcome mat. And couch. And carpet. And with Erika pregnant, Henry took it upon himself to clean every drop. Erika insisted that she just wasn't that pregnant, yet, but one could never be too careful.

Maybe Henry was being a little over-enthusiastic. But Erika didn't complain, and he cleaned up the whole place, just for her. It was probably a matter of time before Tesla burst through their door again covered in slime or bugs or something gnarly, but that was alright. Henry didn't mind. Ever since Magnus died, he felt like it was really just him and Tesla left (and Erika, of course.) It was his little pack, his family.

The more he got to know Tesla, the more he realized the man was just a great big genius kid. He never grew up, not really. Like Peter Pan, making him a Lost Boy. Which would almost make Erika like Wendy, except that Erika was with him instead of Peter... the analogy was a little confused, but if that made his future mini-wolf like baby Michael, he was alright with that.

Henry tapped away on his computer, blinking away the sleep from his eyes. Tesla had asked him to keep an eye on SCIU's internal network in case anything more about Tesla's tech popped up, but so far nothing. Privately, Henry agreed that it was really unlikely that they hadn't made more of his designs, though he kept that from Erika. He didn't want to upset her, or the baby.

He sent another sneaky look around his monitor to glance at his beautiful partner. She was sitting on their couch in front of the TV, watching something very British, a bowl of vanilla ice cream and cranberry sauce (pregnant women were weird,) being all classy and hot. She looked up and caught him staring, and thankfully laughed.

“Would you stop looking at me like that? This baby isn't due for a while yet, remember?”

Henry smiled bashfully. “I know, I know. It's just-- I can't help it.”

Erika just shook her head, and went back to her ice cream.

Henry found himself rubbing the back of his neck, part in embarrassment, partly because he was developing a crick there from staring at his screen for so long. Well, he was almost done, and then he'd get up and stretch his legs. Being in this tiny basement wasn't ideal for getting much exercise, and he felt like he was getting a little flabby from all the sitting around and cheap Chinese food.

He was scanning through emails when he came across something odd. Very odd, from two weeks ago, to Addison's personal account.

 

Addison

 

Tip on Tesla tech raid: please reply to contact us tomorrow via attached address, auto reply unaccepted. Type code and come to the back door at home up-state.

 

 

“Hey Erika,” Henry began, “come check this out.”

Henry minimized the extraneous windows while she pulled herself (and her ice cream) off the old squishy couch and made her way over. He was already dialling Nikola when she finished reading the email.

She shook her head. “This looks... innocuous? If not utterly confusing?”

“Yeah, except that Addison got kicked out of SCIU pretty quickly after it all went to hell, and no one's seen him for ages,” he replied, phone to his ear. It rang once, twice...

Erika's lips curled up in an adorable duck-face of confusion. “Then perhaps less innocuous, and more suspicious.” She stood in close, hands wrapped around her ice-cream bowl, smelling faintly of a gentle flowery scent and the bright, clean smell of fresh laundry. The smell of home.

Henry tapped on some keys and the phone kept ringing, hoping to trace the IP address, but quickly found it to be untraceable. Puzzled, he was about to hang up when the line connected.

“Tell me you found something,” the voice on the other send said curtly.

“Well, kinda,” Henry began, not bothered one iota by Nikola's terseness. It was pretty much his automatic mode. “I found a weird email, but my gut tells me something's up. It's addressed to Addison, seems to be about the shipment of your tech.”

“Addison?”

“Yeah, direct from the UN, took the fall for the Death Node camp. Thing is, he got fired from SCIU around that time. So why would he be getting an untraceable email?”

Henry scratched his neck again as he waited for Tesla to respond.

“You can't trace it?” he finally said.

“That'd be what I said.” Maybe with the setup he had in the Sanctuary, but here on his occasional contract programming work, not so much. He had big plans for when he wasn't living paycheque-to-paycheque.

“Alright. I'll be along shortly. With a _decent_ wine. I still can't believe you--”

“Okay, man, seriously! You just said wine!” Henry said, feeling his hackles raise. Erika raised an eyebrow and took her ice-cream back to Coronation Street, sensing another argument.

“I should think that the word 'decent' would have been an understood indexical! That was certainly the last time I ever let you select a vintage.”

“It seemed okay, to me!”

“It must have been a $14 bottle!”

“I'm freaking broke, man! Not all of us are über-famous scientists with tons of expensive connoisseur-level booze like you!”

“It's not my fault that you have an undereducated palate.”

“You have at least a hundred years on me, man.”

“That's no excuse.”

“Wha-- you know what, just come over. You bring the wine.” Henry hung up, taking great pleasure in doing so.

He didn't have to wait for long until Nikola Tesla swanned in to his apartment, wearing pressed slacks and a crisp white shirt, and a long, thin dark tie, flapping theatrically with his movement. Perched atop his head was a dark grey wide-brimmed hat, tipped stylishly towards one side. Held loosely in his hand was a wine bottle.

“Dude, you look like you just rushed off the set of Singing in the Rain.” All he was missing were the suspenders.

“You have no taste,” he replied breezily, sweeping through the place like he owned it. Pulling his hat off with a wide, arcing motion, he walked over to the couch where Erika was sitting, smiling his big toothy vampire smile. “ _Bonsoir, mademoiselle_ ,” he said, dropping his hat beside her and picking up her hand. She shook her head with a wry smile as he kissed it.

Henry also shook his head. Peter Pan. It was perfect. Nikola deposited his bottle on their little coffee table and joined Henry by his computer set-up.

Henry called up the weird email. “So I tried tracing it every way I know how, and no dice. But, I can't see why, I mean, the damn thing means nothing.”

He glanced up at the vampire's face, watching as his eyes tracked through the email. He stared at the screen intently, like a cat staring at a songbird, before some kind of switch got turned and his face went blank. Then, his eyes went wide, and he looked at Henry.

“Oh for-- I mean, that's-- no, it's can't be.”Henry looked away as Nikola read through again, searching the nonsensical text for some kind of clue as to what his mentor had seen. Nikola looked again, and suddenly, it looked like Christmas had come early.

Henry felt like Santa had forgotten him. “What? What is it?”

“Don't you see? Oh for God's sake, I'm going to murder her myself! Read it again, read every third word.” He was quite suddenly gone and back at the table, ripping the cork right out of the bottle and hurrying to the kitchen for glasses.

Henry turned his attention back to the screen.

“Tip, tech, reply,” he began,

“Starting at 'Tesla,' good lord, Heinrich.”

Of course he'd forget to mention that. The world clearly revolved right around him. “Alright, you could have said that. Uh, okay: Tesla, please, contact, via, auto, type, come, back, home.”

The sudden silence was like a bomb going off. Erika shot off the couch and appeared at Henry's computer, as if checking for herself. “So,” she began, “it's addressed to you?”

“To _us_ , I suspect,” Nikola said, almost bouncing in excitement. He reappeared with wine poured – two glasses for Henry and Nikola, and a tiny little glass for the pregnant Erika. “Hacking is, after all, more your thing,” he graced Henry with a dazzling smile as he handed over a glass.

Erika sipped at her tiny glass. “'Please contact via auto type?' What does that mean?”

Nikola took a generous sip of his glass, eyes sparkling. Henry, though, had jumped ahead (likely as Tesla had wanted him to.) “Autotype. Hey, you mean the weird old machine that you made back in World War II?"

“One and the same,” Tesla responded, eyes flicking back to the email.

Erika and Henry exchanged glances. Someone wanted Tesla to use the Autotype?

“And,” Tesla continued, unable to hold himself in. He flitted around fidgeting with wires, “there's only one left that I'm aware of. And it used to be in the Old City Sanctuary.”

Suddenly, Henry realized exactly why Nikola was so excited. There were only a handful of people who even knew Tesla had made such a machine, and fewer who knew he could use his magnetism to send messages without another machine. And only one person with the cunning and foresight to save the Autotype from being destroyed in the fire that had taken out the Old City Sanctuary.

Henry grinned from ear to ear. Santa didn't forget him after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nikola could barely believe what he was saying, but at the same time, his entire being breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't entirely ready to believe that yes, she's alive, but he felt a traitorous sense of hope...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeks! Sorry for the delay, but life got in the way! I hope this was worth the wait, and if not, let me know and I'll do my best to make the next chapter even better!

 

 

 

Nikola could barely believe what he was saying, but at the same time, his entire being breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't entirely ready to believe that _yes, she's alive_ , but he felt a traitorous sense of hope. He looked over at Henry, and that dull look from the fire, that had never quite faded, was suddenly gone in a rush of sunlight. Even Erika had lit up from the prospect that Helen Magnus could still be alive.

If she were alive, of course, she had copious amounts of explaining to do. Namely, how she could have possibly orchestrated such a miracle, aside from being Helen Magnus.

It wasn't that the thought hadn't occurred to him before, Nikola mused, sipping his Gewurztraminer. But he couldn't find a way to survive on his own, outside of his vampiric ability. He'd gone over it again and again, and come up with nothing. Nothing that could have saved her from the blast, and the consequent fire, and somehow miss detection after that when he and Henry had _searched_...

But there it was. A reference to the autotype. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't think of anyone else who would send a message in that way. Maybe William, but not to say 'please come home.' The only others who knew of the autotype were Henry and perhaps the ever-spunky Kate

“So how do we do?” Henry asked, turning his chair to face Nikola, who paused in his inner-ramblings.

“You mean, other than sending out a message immediately?” He could already feel the magnetism building up in his fingertips, tingling in his bones in response to his desire. He felt almost giddy with excitement.

“Yeah, we could. But how do we do that?” Henry responded.

“Same way I did before, of course.”

“You mean the fake parabolic--”

“Let it go, Heinrich.”

“Yeah, but-- okay.” Henry paused. “Do we really know it's from the Doc?” Henry put down his glass and looked Nikola in the eye.

Nikola knew he'd be devastated if Helen really was dead, but for now, he felt filled with confidence. “We don't.” Nikola replied, with a devilish smile. “I can think of a fabulous way to find out, though.”

Henry looked hesitant. Then, he glanced at Erika, who looked a touch stunned. Her eyes had glazed over, staring at the screen. Henry's hand lifted up and came to rest on Erika's upper arm, and moved in little soothing motions. Really, Nikola had no intention of letting Henry stop him. If he needed to do it alone, it was addressed to him anyway. If he wanted to stay in his safe little world, then so be it. He worked his best alone anyway, when Henry's (and God forbid Erika's) morals were out of the way. Nikola drained his glass, and reached for the bottle to refill it, adding “Aren't you at least curious?”

He continued to watch the wolf, who shifted uncomfortably and glanced back at his computer screen. Nikola took the moment to savour the taste of victory. That is to say, the wine. The crisp, citrus-y cool, almost mineral taste danced on his tongue, chased by a flirtation of floral and an airy dryness. It felt so clear, he wanted to just _go for it_. The fastest way to find out was to contact the message sender as directed.

Henry sighed. “What if it's an old message, delayed or something, and the autotype was destroyed in the fire?

“What if it was? It doesn't mean that the sender wasn't Helen, and that she couldn't be alive.”

Erika grimaced. “But it doesn't mean that she survived, either.”

Nikola stubbornly fought the feeling of drowning, of choking on smoke and ash, and held on to the logic, his buoy in the dark. His eyes turned steely.

“No, it doesn't,” he replied curtly. This was the problem with opening up to people. You begin caring about their opinions, and run the risk of losing precious opportunities. He shifted his attention back to Henry.

The breeze floated up into the tiny apartment, pulling coyly at the thin draperies, which fluttered. The tension in the room began to build as Nikola's patience began to wear thin. His eyes remained fixed on the wolfboy until Henry let out a deep sigh.

“Look, man, I want it to be Magnus just as much as you do. But we need to know more. For all we know, it could be some bizzaro psychic trap, and I'm not making decisions that only affect me anymore.”

 _Of course,_ Nikola thought, _he's worried about Wolf Junior._ Henry's eyes were bright with hope, despite his inner struggle. That hope so accurately reflected the things that Nikola felt simmering under his own skin, it rubbed that last raw nerve of his. He swallowed down the bile and forced a gentile face.

“Alright then, fine. But you're not stopping me.” And with a flash, Nikola was gone.

He raced through the city street at vampiric speed, whisking past people who were barely sensed he'd gone by. The scent of people, lulled and docile, like cattle to the slaughter, touched his nose, but he ignored the sensation, letting it pass through. _I made a promise_ , he reminded himself. _A promise I will keep_. He careened around corners and buildings, dull grey sidewalks and the silver minnow flashes of cars sweeping by, until he found his favourite route; a pattern of old ochre bricks up an ancient gridiron building, caressed by age and climbing ivy. He leapt up the side of the building, his clawed hands finding the iron fire escape easily. He ascended, pausing only once he reached triangular roof. Wind bustled through his hair and clothing, pulling away the closed-in feeling. Staring across the city, standing above the sleepwalkers, playing “hurry up and wait,” he felt freedom.

Old City stretched out beneath him, like a beckoning lover, brazen and bright-eyed, all flashing lights and back alleys. The bridge was off in the distance, stark against the light of noon, like a smear of rust and steel against the gentle blue of the sky. The sun sat high and proud, over the groggy city. But it was familiar to him as any, really. He'd roamed across Europe, Asia, Africa, and much of the Americas. Old City was like any other on the outside.

Nikola took in a breath. The bridge would have enough metal rods and abandoned pieces to amplify his magnetic ability, and he could easily broadcast across most of the US. It was the perfect, giant, antennae. And it would help him find Helen.

A sudden noise behind him gave Nikola pause. He didn't whirl around; it wouldn't do to let them know he'd been caught off-guard. He was flexing his claws when he recognized the deep guttural sound of the large creature breathing. Instead, he raised his best imperious eyebrow, turned around, and folded his arms across his chest.

“So you've decided to join me after all?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” came Henry's reply, his voice a grumble through his morphing dog-face. “Couldn't let you have all the fun,” he continued with a grin.

Nikola turned away, just in case he couldn't stop his returning grin in time. “Then let's get this party started.”

 

.oOo.

 

Light streamed in through the prismatic ceiling above the Sanctorium hydroponic garden. The ceiling consisted of large panes of glass, some plain, others interspersed with reclaimed stained glass works gained through the years. Rainbows of light and angelic faces shone down on the long white racks and assorted plants, shivering in the circulated air. Helen took a deep breath of the fresh, bright air, as she strolled down one of the many long paths, surrounded by greenery of all kinds. Some were huge lines of vegetables: leafy lettuce dotted with water droplets, tomato plants with bright red fruits hanging heavy on the sinuous vines, the fluffy tops of carrots, and racks of beans and peas. Others were flowers, of all kinds, sizes, shapes, and colours. Pots of herbs hung in tiers, or planted near vegetables. In a large section toward the back, there were rows of fruits trees and nut trees, full and leafy, with woven baskets in a stand nearby for harvesting. There were rows and rows of rare abnormal plants, as well; oversized pitcher plants that glowed a faint green, grasses that would occasionally pull up their roots in search of a spot with more sun, and tiny violet flowers that, when you got close enough, you could hear humming in chorus. Even the bipedal plant (or part-plant) abnormals would often be found here, on the rare occasions they left their enclosures. It was a wonderous place. Helen's sanctuary within her Sanctuary.

She liked to garden, especially when she was kneading through a problem. It was a great time for her to get a change of scenery, to refresh, and look at it anew. Of all the things that she could have acquired a taste for, gardening wasn't one she expected, but she loved having earth in her hands, and the long, quiet patience of trees. Sometimes, it helped to remind herself that she couldn't push the river. Sometimes, she needed to take the lesson of trees, and wait for things to come to her.

 _Which was the case now,_ she mused. She had been so sure that her plan would work, that Henry or Nikola would find that email, and decipher it. She barely slept the first three nights, curled up on her desk in her office with the autotype sitting next to her. The old metal was blackened with age, standing out in an antiquated bronze next to the soft blue and seamless panels of Praxian technologies. But it was silent. Nothing had come through yet. It was only due to Will's dogged persistence that she had taken this break to walk through the hydroponics, otherwise she'd likely have been waiting in her office with baited breath.

He was right, she realized, as she felt the tension ease from her body. The stress practically leaked out of her pores. Feeling whimsical, she reached into the nearest berry bush and popped a raspberry into her mouth. It burst on her teeth in a bright, juicy tang. She needed to get away for a few minutes. Of course, she might not have gone on her little wander if Will hadn't promised to take point at the autotype post, but that was neither here nor there.

Her stomach growled loudly, and she laughed. The abnormal grass skittered away in surprised, shimmering in the light as it moved.

“Oh, I didn't mean to startle you,” she said, more out of habit. The grass gathered in the corner of the box it was currently inhabiting. Taking pity, Helen walked over, reached up to one of the many daylight lamps, and turned it so it shone into the box more directly. The grass rippled in content, and stopped skittering.

It wouldn't do to starve herself, she decided. A quick sandwich and tea, and she'd get back up to her office. She felt ready to head up to the surface and scour the streets. She had promised she wouldn't do anything rash, but surely another covert canvassing wouldn't hurt. She had barely turned around when she heard rapid footsteps approaching. Will was walking, almost jogging, toward her.

Her heart leapt into her throat.

“Magnus,” he began, his body heaving for breath. “We got a message.”

She was almost afraid to ask, but she set such silliness aside. “From the autotype?”

“Yeah,” he replied, drawing himself back up, recovering quickly. “It's just coming through now.”

 

.oOo.

 

“Okay! I always knew you were crazy, but this? This is crazy!” Henry bellowed over the wind whipping through the bridge. Nikola answered him with an outrageous grin.

Nikola fought the strain of reaching out so far with his magnetism, his entire body shaking with the effort. His tie danced across his chest and shoulders, his shirt almost plastered to his side by the relentless wind, though it barely cooled his body which was reaching inferno levels. He flicked his gaze back to the cobbled metal bars and cables that were acting as his magnetic magnification, his hands wrapped around two thick steel beams at the base. He shuddered with the strain.

The makeshift radio tower looked like it was straight out of one of those steampunk fantasy stories that Henry was so fond of, made of bits and pieces of spare parts and broken structure. It barely held together even without the wind, rocking dangerously in the wind. The tower let out an ear-splitting creak as it listed to the side. To top matters off, Nikola and Henry had built it on the top of the suspension bridge, to make extra sure he had enough range to cover all of Europe if need be. Or perhaps to even penetrate to the depths of Hollow Earth. Whatever it took, wherever and whenever.

His hands slid, slick from sweat. He looked up, sending all his focus into his ability, repeating his message over and over. He was distantly aware of Heinrich appearing by his side to look dubiously (but excitedly) at their handiwork, but Nikola was too busy.

His strength _poured_ into the metal, which vibrated and creaked from the sheer power of it. It felt good. Reckless, and crazy, but good. He didn't even realize how trapped he had felt in that tiny excuse for a living, sneaking under the noses of SCIU. Maybe they'd notice the bizzare power emanating from the bridge, but it was a chance he was willing to take.

_Helen._

 

.oOo.

 

Together, Will and Helen dashed out of the hydroponic garden, the doors _woosh_ ing closed behind them. They hurried through the halls, dashing past the kitchen door which hid amongst more large ferns which spilled out of the garden. They raced through the halls of the Sanctorium, easily accustomed to the odd S-shaped halls of the building. Helen felt _intensely_ grateful that she hadn't strayed too far from her office, for the Sanctorium was in two buildings, connected by a bridge with several air-locking mechanisms. Going from one side to the other was no small feat. Instead of waiting on the elevator to reach the third floor where her office lay, Helen darted into the staircase after Will. They leapt up the stairs, two at a time, and whisked down the hall. The second and third floors were mezzonines over the Great Hall, though Helen sped right past without taking in the gorgeous view.

She burst through the door to hear the ancient, heavy clacking of keys on the autotype. Her gut clenched painfully as she raced across the room. Glancing at Will, whose face held all the surprise and trepidation that hers surely did, for she felt it, keen as a knife's edge. Gently, she picked up the long, fragile paper she had set aside for this message, and fed it into the machine.

Will was almost vibrating next to her, his eyes flicking back and forth with each heavy thunk. Helen held her breath, barely daring to blink, the hope, the fear, the relentless desire to make answers come _right now_ almost too much to bear.

 _Clack. Clack. Clack._ Like the second-hand of a clock. Merciless. Even. Timeless...

Yet it only took moments for the message to come through. When she read it, Helen had to laugh aloud. She looked at Will, who's eyes lit up with excitement. His jaw hung open, looking again like the Will she had hired almost six years previously. She saw the wonder in his face that she had missed since... Perhaps since the business in Mumbai. She could barely believe it herself, and it was simply so Nikola, she had to believe.

 

YOU'RE SEXY WHEN YOU SPEAK IN CODE

RENDEZVOUS?

 

Her hands shook, and stilled when the clacking continued. She hurriedly fed the machine with more paper.

 

LOVELY PLACE ON FIFTH -VERY PRIVATE

BRING WINE: YOUR HAP HAS NO TASTE

 

Helen and Will were stunned. They exchanged looks, and Helen couldn't help it. She smiled ear to ear, and shook her head. Unbelievable. Will huffed out a laugh, and she started to giggle. Both of them erupted into bubbly laughter, quickly mounting into hysterics. The tension suddenly just _eased_. There it was.

They were alive.

After days of waiting, after months of searching, there it was. An indication that not only Nikola, but Henry too, had survived the fire and gone underground. And soon, she could go pick them up and bring them to the Sanctorium. Henry could take on his old job as the head of tech, and Nikola...

Nikola.

She wasn't entirely sure what had driven her in her last encounter with him. Desperation, fear, but perhaps most of all, absolution. She didn't want to die without at the very least expressing some of how she'd felt. When she'd lead Caleb to the main lab, she lamented all she would leave behind, all the things she could never fix: her relationship with Will, Henry and his baby, the death of Biggie. But when she'd looked Nikola in the eye, she'd realized in that moment. Despite the hardships, despite the bad blood that had been between them... she lamented the loss of Nikola Tesla the most.

And when she _survived_ , and he was simply gone...

The pang of fear, the knife of regret and despair had been surprising. Helen had put her heart on the back-burner for so long, she'd almost forgotten what it was like. An entire lifetime of enforced seclusion. There was interaction, there was forward momentum, but she knew without a doubt that she could never get involved with someone, not even casually. The emotional ties, the changes, the _chance that it could alter everything_ was just too great. She'd locked her heart away for over a hundred years, telling herself that the knowledge that she could protect her friends would be enough.

Until it wasn't. Until he'd risked himself to save her foster son in the SCIU testing facility. Until Nikola had asked her, in a timid little voice, who she would have chosen to give up to the virtual Worth. Until he had looked right through her in the main lab, his steel eyes softening into mercury. She'd crossed the room without hesitation. She pulled him into her arms, and kissed her best friend deeply.

She breathed in, looked at Will, and smiled. He smiled back, eyes crinkled and shining. His hands lifted and ran through his hair, leaving it spiked in unruly ways. His shirt had ridden up, but he didn't notice. “Okay then, what's the plan?”

Helen took another deep breath. A plan. They needed a plan.

“Well, first we need to discover this 'lovely place on fifth,' and I think I need to take a quick trip down to the cellar for a vintage suitable to the occasion,” she answered, shifting her weight. If she had wanted to _go right now_ before, she was practically jumping out of her skin to head up to the surface immediately, protocols be damned.

“Alright, you do that. But first, you need to change, you look way too much like you.”

Helen snorted. “Yes, sir,” she replied, feeling cheeky.

Will shook his head with a light-hearted smirk. “They're your rules, Magnus.”

“That you are the chief enforcer of, yes!” Helen responded, watching Will as he began to leave the room. It was over his shoulder that he answered.

“You get changed, I'll sort out the location. Deal?” And he walked out of the room without a reply.

Helen's heart sang. If she had to wear those insect glasses and the huge floppy hat for this, she would. Anything if it brought her people together again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rickety old fence stood guardian around the building, full of oddments and dusty old bottles. Helen looked out the car window at the old, somewhat decrepit looking exterior. Her gaze flicked to the weathered sign, all peeling paint and peeking strips of wood. She could barely make it out, but it seemed to be the right kind of place. If you could find Nikola anywhere, this would be it...

 

 

A rickety old fence stood guardian around the building, full of oddments and dusty old bottles. Helen looked out the car window at the old, somewhat decrepit looking exterior. Her gaze flicked to the weathered sign, all peeling paint and peeking strips of wood. She could barely make it out, but it seemed to be the right kind of place. If you could find Nikola anywhere, this would be it.

The winery on Fifth Avenue was small, and out of the way; an old converted townhouse much like the other trendy shops and restaurants in the area. It was surrounded by trellises of vegetables and hanging pots of annuals. A small, private place, with an elegant sloped cover over a little patio. Helen could just picture Nikola, leaned up against the high table, smiling his smile, flirting with an employee, swirling a wine taste test around in a small glass. Yet as of this moment, the shop was empty. It was well-after midnight. Helen looked over at Will, who was dozing next to her, his shoulders curled up as if he were trying to keep everything in. He looked... exhausted. Will had been running on fumes for far too long. Helen felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn't been taking care of him. _He_ hadn't been taking care of himself.

“Will,” she began, her voice hushed. Though quickly, she realized she wasn't sure what to say. Will was, like Henry, as good as being her child. But that's never what Will had wanted, not truly. He was her equal, and wanted to be treated as such. Her mother hen routine would only insult him; and it _had,_ more and more since they'd moved underground.

He looked up, drawn and pale.

“You didn't have to come,” Helen began. Will made a face.

“I want to see Henry as much as you do,” he replied, turning back to the stake-out. They'd been there for hours. Helen shook her head a little, but accepted it. Helen had not missed the brotherly dynamic, and she knew in her heart that Will suffered the loss of Henry as greatly as she did. “Though I'll admit, I could probably do without the sparkly vampire.”

Helen snorted.

Their stakeout might have even happened on the wrong night, really. Or they could be in the wrong place. Nikola's response wasn't particularly descriptive, which only furthered Helen's conviction. No one else could be both simultaneously that descriptive and vague. It had to be him. But what it didn't say was an address. Though “bring wine,” and being “on fifth,” did suggest that a winery would be a probable meeting point. He also neglected to mention a time or a date. Nikola was a genius, but he was also...

Impulsive. He thought of details, but he couldn't think ahead. Hand him any equation, any problem to solve, and he'd hand it to you with a flourish in five minutes. But to ask him to plan for contingencies? That was more James' department, and later Helen's.

She pulled in a deep breath, and let it out in a controlled exhale. It was him. It was _them_. It had to be.

“Magnus--” Will's voice almost surprised her, but she'd seen it, too. A superhuman _flit_ across the street at the winery they were staking out. They were out of the SUV in seconds, barely taking the time to check for observers. She heard Will unholster his stunner a moment after she'd pulled out her own, her body working on automatic as it would on any mission. She'd dressed better for the occasion this time; a black turtleneck sweater and black slacks, covered by her long overcoat open and floating behind her as she rushed across the street. Their boots barely made a sound as they came up to the building to secure the area.

Helen nodded to Will, and signalled he go to the right. She sidled up to the winery, pressing her back to the wall. Quickly, she looked around the corner and pulled back, cataloguing everything at a glance. Nothing. Helen rounded the corner, her own stunner held before her, relaxed but ready to fire. Surrounding trees danced in the cool evening breeze, the light of street lamps playing between the leaves. The yellow light cast an eerie glow on the tiny winery, pulling the shadows out in a warm black.

The yard behind the shop was gated in with an old black metal fence. Gently, she felt for the latch through the gaps of the gate, easing it open as quietly as she could, just in case. She couldn't afford to be found by the wrong people, she'd worked too long and too hard for the Sanctorium. The gate whispered its protest, but otherwise didn't prove to be a problem.

Helen surveyed the backyard.

Nothing.

Will came around from the other side, having gotten into the yard, somehow. He looked almost inquisitive, as if to say _what now?_ with a tiny shrug of his shoulder.

Helen's heart did a nose-dive, followed quickly by her sense of hope. She looked around again, looking into every crevice, every corner. But, there weren't many places that anyone could hide in this tiny yard. But she had _seen_ something, they both did. Warily, she scanned the area for something. Anything.

Nothing.

“You never call, you never write--”

Helen and Will whirled around at the familiar voice, hearts jumping into their throats. Both of their stunners came up reflexively, though dropped almost immediately. Nothing behind them. The back of the winery was little more than red brick in a wash of shadow, with a couple of garbage bins lining the little path. The back door remained innocuously closed. She looked around, feeling suddenly desperate. _What--_

“Oh c'mon, Doc, you of all people shouldn't fall for this.”

Will laughed out loud and looked up. Helen followed his gaze, and there they were, cool as you please, standing atop the roof. Henry stood with his hands in his jeans pockets, a plaid shirt draped around his frame over a simple t-shirt, looking both relaxed and almost sheepish. Nikola raised a brow at Henry. He looked like he'd hopped straight out of the 20s with a thin tie and a charcoal grey hat.

“You spoiled my entrance,” Nikola said petulantly, pulling at his hat until it sat just right.

“Oh, so this is all about you?”

“I'm the one who sent the--”

“--you know this meant a lot--”

“--I had it all planned out! You--

“--and Erika's gonna beat you!--”

Helen interjected. “The both of you come down here before I _come get you myself_.”

Will's shoulders shook as he suppressed his laughter in breathy huffs. Soon enough, he was doubled over, his stunner loose in his right hand and his left braced on his leg as his entire body heaved with the giggles he was trying so hard to keep in. Helen couldn't fight back her smile, or discipline her face into a frown for the sake of the frankly childish behaviour she was experiencing on all fronts.

But it filled her with _light_. Henry and Nikola had returned to them, she could barely believe it. They looked a little on the thin side, and despite outward appearances she sensed a bone-deep weariness, the kind that comes from living with the constant fear of discovery. But as soon as they jumped down from the roof and landed before her, she found she didn't much care.

Helen swept Henry into her arms and held on tight. He not only looked too thin, but felt too thin. Henry's arms squeezed reassuringly around her. She pulled back and caught his shoulders, and placed a hand on his cheek. She took in the details – his skin was a little pale, and he needed a shave, but his eyes were full of that spark of mischief; that curious, almost naive look of his. Helen's grin felt like would tear her face right in half, but she couldn't help it.

There was a warm silence for a moment, no one dared say a word unless it broke the magical circumstance that brought them together. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nikola and Will exchange nods and knowing smirks. _Th_ _ose two,_ she thought. It had been a long time coming, but perhaps the ice had finally melted between them.

“... so we got your weird email,” Henry said, ducking his head as if embarrassed.

“Yeah, we can see that,” Will replied, his voice wry. Helen moved out of the way, and the two exchanged a quick, heartfelt hug with a clap on the back.

“Yes, well done, Henry,” Helen added, as Will ruffled up Henry's hair. Henry beamed.

Helen turned to Nikola, who'd stayed unusually silent throughout the exchange. She looked him over, reaching over to hug him too, before she paused. He'd gone stock-still, staring with his stormy grey eyes, which churned with unspoken emotions. His hair stood up in odd spikes, a little longer than it normally was, and his handsome face was even paler than Henry's. His hat was in his hands; and while he affected a laissez-faire pose, he was as motionless as a spooked deer. It was a stunning tableau, though, his slacks tight and his shirt draped over his lean frame. Instead, she took his hat from him, and handed it to Will.

Will and Henry exchanged looks, Will's face expressing _we'll give you some space_ , and Henry's saying something more like _I don't even know what's happening_. The two of them walked away exchanging quiet words, Will's arm over Henry's shoulder companionably. She turned back to face Nikola, taking his hands.

 

.oOo.

 

Nikola still couldn't believe it.

Helen. _Helen_.

For some odd reason, his limbs refused to work. Thankfully, he'd gotten into a decently convincing pose that would (hopefully) not betray his sudden and rather ridiculous case of nerves. Nikola Tesla doesn't get--

\--Nervous. Okay, so he was nervous.

His hands shook ever so slightly in hers as he drank in her image. Her eyes shone. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and she was radiant. She was swathed in a rather large overcoat, her hair pulled out of her face and secured in a long chic ponytail at the base of her skull. Her lips curled up into a hesitant smile. He felt her hands squeeze around his.

“Nikola, I--”

As if her voice, the proof that she _really was there_ , had been enough to break the spell that had come over him, his stillness evaporated into a cocky swagger. His mouth stretched into a cheeky grin, and he pulled her hands to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss on her knuckles. He inclined his head to her with a touch of theatre. “So the Empress of Abnormals returns to grace us with her presence, I see.”

The look of scandalized surprised was completely worth it. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes flashed with the electric _something_ that Nikola had always found so attractive. Some kind of cross between an angered _what did you just say to me?_ with a dash of fond and sarcastic _why do I even keep you around?_ But, he supposed, the tiny grin pulling at her lips meant she can't have been all that upset. She seemed almost at a loss for words.

“It's about time you showed up,” she settled on, with a wry grin. “I was beginning to worry that you'd done something silly. Like change.”

It was Nikola's turn to gape at her with his mouth hanging open, various feelings warring for centre stage somewhere inside him. He did his best to affect a mischievous smirk, though he suspected Helen saw right through him. Much to his own surprise (and chagrin,) he had changed a great deal! He was still just as brilliant, still just as cranky, but he'd... hadn't she noticed that he wasn't the same man he once was? Though there must have been some kind of poker tell, because she tightened her hold on his hands.

It was all just too much to take in all at once, this woman, this supernova of a human being, who effortlessly took up all the space in the room. Seemingly back from the dead, bantering with him as if nothing had ever happened. As if he hadn't gone through that gamut of feelings, and he just didn't do that very often. He was devastated by all the things he couldn't find the voice to say. _I missed you, I thought you were dead, I didn't know how to live without you._ “Just don't do that to me again.”

Oh yes, Nikola Tesla, the master of linguistic ripostes. He was armed to the tooth with words that cut like knives, and _that_ was the best he could come up with. Yet, instead of the glib response he'd expected, she said something that all but caressed a very intimate something his core.

“I won't. I promise you.”

Her eyes sparkled, and she shifted her hands, raising _his_ knuckles to her lips. She brushed across them faintly, looking at him through her eyelashes. Nikola forgot to breathe...

The moment was broken when Will and Henry returned. Will looked utterly torn between wanting to interrupt and wanting to leave them be.

“Magnus, we've got a situation.”

 

.oOo.

 

Will had kept half an eye on Magnus and Tesla while he chatted with Henry. He wasn't close enough to hear their exchange, but their body language told him everything he needed to know. And more; there was definitely stuff there he absolutely did not need to know. He chuckled to himself when Magnus turned the tables on Tesla, mirroring his actions. Did they even understand how much they meant to each other?

He didn't have time to wonder, though, as his phone vibrated in his back pocket. He pulled it out and found a message from Declan. His eyes went wide. He saw Henry give him a look, clouded with concern, ( _fatigue, dehydrated, pale from being indoors,)_ out of the corner of his eye.

“So I've been back with you guys for less than ten minutes, and things have already gone to hell?” Henry asked, shaking his head.

“Not quite to hell, but...” Will shrugged his shoulder expressively. He tipped his head toward the couple, and waited for Henry to acknowledge before returning to their meeting point. He paused; unsure if they'd even notice him standing there, they were so caught up in each other ( _toes pointed_ _towards each other,_ _pupils dilated,_ _shallow excited breaths_ ) but after a moment, he was noticed.

Magnus gently let go of Tesla's hands, with a flicker of regret flashing through her face. Barely enough to notice, but it was there. He tightened his grip on the phone. “Magnus, we've got a situation. Got a message from Declan. There's been a sighting.”

Magnus froze and examined Will. He watched her eyes flit, as if she were simultaneously looking for cues in his expression, and organizing her options. Tesla and Henry wore matching frowns.

“A sighting of what?” Henry asked.

Magnus grimaced. “We've been keeping an eye on a very large abnormal in the Pacific, right off the coast of British Columbia. It's very large, and very dangerous, and we need to capture it straightaway. I fear if SCIU got its hands on it first, the consequences would be dire.”

Things suddenly began to move very quickly. Recognition and understanding pulled Tesla's eyebrows upward, and the sense of threat creased his brow even more. Henry looked confused, but he put the pieces together quickly enough. Will glanced across the yard ( _retreat is clear, open space to the right, keep to the shadows to avoid detection_ ,) and started pulling Henry with him.

“Wait, wait, capture it, with what? And take it where? Where have you guys even _been_?” Henry demanded, though he allowed himself to be jostled along.

“Not here,” Will replied with a sympathetic look, “we'll explain on the way, okay?”

“But what about Erika?”

Will stopped dead, as did Magnus. Tesla, who was leading the charge, stopped and turned in an economic, fluid gesture, like dance, or a martial arts form. Henry turned too, though not nearly as gracefully. His shoulders rounded, ( _defensive, afraid, protective, dominant_ ) his feet planted and solid.

“Erika?” Magnus replied, looking taken aback. And Will knew why – something she hadn't accounted for, not this evening. Not to worry, though, because Will had. Wordlessly, he started directing the group toward the SUV.

“She's at our apartment, waiting to hear back from us,” Henry replied, barely noticing how he was being moved. Will caught Tesla surveying Will's behaviour, and quirking his head.

“Your apartment? In Old City?”

“Yeah,” Henry responded, staring at Magnus.

Before Magnus could even open her mouth, Will beat her to the punch. “I'll phone Abby, Erika can stay at her place until the coast is clear. Once we've cleaned up, we'll pick her up, and head down from there.” He met his mentor's eyes, and she nodded her approval.

“Head down _where?_ ” Henry asked, following the cues to get into the SUV. Will tossed the keys to Magnus, who promptly got into the driver's seat, and he practically flopped into the shotgun seat.

Tesla made some kind of tsk sound. Will smiled magnanimously over his shoulder, and watched as Tesla sidled into the backseat, looking like he felt very much demoted. Henry sat behind Will, sliding forward in his seat. “Abby won't mind?”

“I think Abby would love to catch up with Erika,” he said, chuckling to himself. As a matter of fact, he knew that Abby would love to catch up with Erika. He and Abby had reminisced on their double-date with Henry and Erika and she'd been quite specific about it. Something about wanting to have more estrogen in her immediate circle, because there was so much testosterone posturing at her workplace. Will had wisely kept his mouth shut about it being SCIU, and therefore inevitable. So far as anyone had known, though, Erika was in London.

He was already dialling his lovely girlfriend before Magnus had shifted the SUV into drive, pulling out of their spot on the road. She kept the lights off, just in case they were spotted, but as soon as they came into a more populated area, she'd flick them on and blend in.

Abby picked up on the second ring. Her voice was groggy, catching in its fatigue. Despite that, though, it was the most beautiful thing he'd heard in a week. He missed her so damn much. “Will, you know I love you, but do you know what time it is?”

“Um, it's...” he checked his watch, “3:41?” Will winced; he had forgotten how late it was. Rather, how early.

The other side of the line was silent for a moment. She was either stopping herself from a tirade about the importance of REM, or she'd fallen asleep again.

“Abby, I really need you to do me a favour,” he entreated. Will blocked out the distractions, including the wiggly-eyebrows-vampire who was grinning all kinds of suggestive things; Henry who was tapping his foot in nervous impatience; and at Magnus, whose driving tactics were about the opposite of blending-in as she sped along a least twenty-over the limit.

She sighed indulgently, but he could hear the small smile on her end. “Ohh, I _suppose_ I could,” she said, drawing out her words like she always did. “But you'll owe me, mister!”

“I'll owe you whatever you like,” he replied.

“... anything?”

Will laughed, a little indignantly, and added “within reason!”

Abby giggled, but she relented. “Ohh, okay, okay. What's up?”

The momentary high came crashing back down when he remembered why he was calling. “I need you to go pick up Erika. A call came in, and we can't go pick her up. We need to make sure she's safe.”

There was a shuffle and the sound of a drawer being opened on the other line. “Oh my god, is everyone okay? Does that mean-- did you find the others? How come Erika's not with Henry now? Where'd you meet? What happened? How should I--”

“Ab,” Will warned.

“Right. Unsecured line. Well, now that Henry's back, I hope he can write up some fancy code to make it so this isn't a problem anymore?” The drawer squeaked again, and made a soft _thunk_ as it closed.

Will paused. That wasn't a half-bad idea.

“I'll ask him. In the meantime, I'll text you the address. We'll let her know you're coming, and you both stay together until we can come pick her up. Are you sure you don't want to come back with her?”

“Willlll,” she said, pulling out the L in his name, “you know I can't do that.”

He sighed.

"Yeah, I know. I just...” Will looked around the SUV. Magnus was studiously staring at the road, but she was notorius for listening in despite any distractions. Henry was definitely listening; he was leaned almost over the seat. Tesla was the only one who didn't seem to care. He was leaned back and started at the back of Magnus' head. _Ah, screw it. What the hell._

“I miss you, that's all.”

“Aww, I miss you, too, Will.

“I love you, Ab, I'll see you soon.”

Will could hear her breathy smile through the phone. “I love you, too. Stay safe.”

They exchanged their goodbyes, and Will immediately began texting Erika's address, simultaneously re-engaging with his surroundings. They had moved a good distance away, toward the coast most likely. Even though they really didn't have the equipment they needed to bag the beastie. They'd have to wait until Declan sent the all-clear before getting started, but... could a team get there in time?

If they couldn't, and SCIU got there first... Will shuddered.

It was another half-hour to the coast. Long enough for a quick power nap, just in case. From all he'd heard tell about this abnormal, he was going to need it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen watched as Henry and Nikola exchanged glances. It was as if there were a silent debate happening, and she wasn't quite privy to the details. Henry looked alarmed; whether it was because of the concept of a several-kilometre large turtle or the mischievous grin on Nikola's face, she wasn't sure. It was the grin that worried Helen. She could handle giant turtles.

 

 

“You've been _squirrelled away_ in Hollow Earth this entire time?” Nikola groused,  his quick-silver glance lifting to meet her eyes in the rear-view mirror. Helen met his glare, glancing also at Henry sitting next to Nikola in the back seat. She still couldn't quite believe that they were in her car, but it was time to compartmentalize. There was a very rare abnormal at stake.

“ There was no other way, ” Helen  responded, a flicker of temper translating into a heavier foot on the accelerator. Will swayed in the seat beside her, out like a light still. He'd wake up in another five to seven minutes, though. He excelled at the art of the nap. “ It had to be Hollow Earth. Anywhere else and I would have \--”

“ Threatened the timeline,  so you keep insisting .  Except that once you re-joined us during the insurgent-crisis, that excuse became  a touch  stale .”

She was silent for a moment. She'd seen this in Nikola very few times before. His complexion was almost ashen, made paler still by the darkness of his eyes. Behind his cool detachment, there was a hint of something she could have sworn was desperation. Fear. She saw it when he lost his vampirism to the de-vamper. She saw it in him when they'd injected the Source Blood serum for the first time. He was afraid. For himself? For Helen?

Henry cleared his throat. “So what are we dealing with, then?” he asked, shifting forward in his seat. Helen gave her head a little shake. Her personal reflections could wait until they were home.

“Chelonioidea arborescens,” Helen began. “Many cultures in the world have lore about an enormous turtle, _so large_ that it carries the world on its back. The _Mikcheech_ of the Mi'kmaq peoples, the _Akupāra_ of Hindu mythology, the Chinese turtle _Ao_ , all are myths based around this abnormal.”

“Are you saying that there's a super huge turtle living off the coast of Vancouver? And no one's found one yet?”

Helen shrugged, checking her mirrors again. “Anyone who happened upon one while sailing might mistake it for an island.”

“... like Termina Bay,” Henry replied, sinking back into his seat. Nikola stared at Henry for a moment, clearly wondering what new affliction of the mind Henry was suffering from this week.

“It's imperative that we find it before SCIU has the chance to notice it's arrival,” she continued. She shuddered to think what they would do if they found it. They'd capture it. Experiment on it. Turn it into a bloody personal moving air base for deploying some kind of abnormal army. Helen's foot pressed a little tiny bit harder on the accelerator.

There was a poignant pause as the highway sped past, light streaming by like yellow banners. They whisked by, cutting through the dark of the road, the sky, the long highway lined with imposing, ancient trees. The occasional car sped by, going opposite, or Helen gunned her way past others who were _in her way, dammit_. The clock on the dash ticked along another minute, then another. Will stirred in the passenger seat. 

“So, what makes our Franklin so dangerous?” Nikola asked with a sigh. It was the proverbial olive-branch, at least for now. He'd help with their capture, if it brought him the answers that he wanted about Helen's secretive work at the Sanctorium. She looked in the rear-view mirror again. He was all poise and long lines. Even sitting in the back seat of an SUV he looked so elegant and put-together, as if the very act of breathing was a dance; each look, flick of the eyes, every minute gesture somehow flawlessly glamourous. Yet he was utterly still; not because he was shocked, but because he was holding himself back. Impatience and irritation was simmering under his surface.

“Maybe because it's a giant island turtle?” Henry said, though his tone was more of a question than a scathing retort. He looked at Helen, as if verifying. Helen switched lanes. 

“That giant island turtle could take a page out of Kali's book,” came a grumble out of the passenger seat. “It could wipe out the city with a good tsunami-level panic attack.”

H elen watched as Henry and Nikola exchanged glances.  It was as if there were a silent debate happening, and she wasn't quite privy to the details. Henry looked alarmed; whether it was because of the concept of a several-kilometre large turtle or the  mischievous grin on Nikola's face, she wasn't sure. 

It was the grin that worried Helen. She could handle giant turtles.

It was still almost 4:30 when the Sanctorium team arrived with more equipment, leaving Helen and company to stake out the empty shoreline for twenty minutes. Twenty long, _excruciating_ minutes,  during which she sat and checked her earwig for transmissions twelve times. She'd long accepted that she couldn't do everything herself, but sitting and waiting for someone else, being unable to act, was unbearable. It didn't matter if it was because she wasn't equipped for a water excursion, or she wasn't able to act because she might be recognized. Helen hated doing nothing. 

She all but threw the door open when the radio  finally  crackled in her  ear. The team was announcing their ETA.  She wrapped her coat around her, tying the belt into a quick knot to keep it from flying open. She probably should have brought her hat, at least. It was absurdly early in the morning, but there were still people about. 

Oh well.

She  had only gotten a few steps before Will was suddenly in her way. Nikola's hat  was in his hands, and he deposited it firmly onto her head with a satisfied smirk.  Helen had to chuckle at that. Of course she wouldn't get away with being hat-less. Not even at four in the morning.  At least Will couldn't justify the  sun glasses. 

“They're your rules, Magnus,” he said with a sarcastic shrug, his hands jammed into his pockets, before turning to head to the crew's unmarked van. Henry followed. 

“You always did look stunning in hats, but I must say, you look extra-sexy in mine,” came a voice from beside her. 

“You lasted an entire hour, I'm very proud.” 

Nikola's face split into an  irreverent smirk,  eyes twinkling . Helen thought back through what she'd just said, and desperately wanted to plant her face into her palms.  Instead, she mastered her expression as best she could,  pasting her best irate look .

“Before carrying on with your ridiculous flirtations,” Helen said evenly, but it did nothing to deter the look of satisfaction she saw on Nikola's face. She rolled her eyes.

“My dear Helen, I'd _much_ rather take my time, than be satisfied with one paltry hour, ” he said, leaning in ever-so-slightly.  He smelled a touch different; there was an overtone of cheap soap and his favourite cologne was gone, but underneath was still the heady, almost-musk that was _Nikola_ , that ozone-zing, that one part of his scent that hadn't changed for over a hundred years. She felt herself flush a touch more. 

H elen raised her eyebrow. 

“Magnus!” came a call from her earwig. Declan. She'd have to thank him later. Without his knowing, of course, because she had no intentions of letting Nikola get _that_ under her skin. Her hand flew to her ear, as she tuned in. Nikola paused, and leaned in, conspiratorially this time. Listening in, clearly. His hearing was more than sensitive enough to hear it from where he was, but...

“Go ahead, Declan,” she prompted.

“Your turtle's on the move, coming up to shore fast. You lot best set up quick, because it'll be on you in less than five.”

 

.oOo.

 

There was a flurry of activity when Helen passed on the message, and her team very quickly outfitted themselves with equipment vests and thigh-strapped stunners, or helped set up bits of equipment on the beach. There were large poles, for some kind of stun net, large lights on tripods pointed out at the lake. Sandbags had been set up behind hastily dug trenches in the sand in an attempt to contain any water that might get thrown up onto the beach. It was just as well that it was egregiously early in the morning – it gave Nikola more room to manoeuvre. Not that he really was all that fussed about people seeing him, or getting in the way. But Helen was a stickler for preserving life, human or abnormal.

Nikola tamped down on a terrible rage. He couldn't believe it. It was so obvious. Of _course_ she went to Hollow Earth. There was literally nowhere else on the planet she could have gone. A rumbling growl reverberated deep in his chest as he bit his tongue. How could he have been so stupid? The answer was right in front of him all along. He'd even confronted her about it, and she denied it. Kept him out.

“ _Secret phone calls, shutting down Sanctuaries, Wall Street. Come on, Helen. Let me in.”_

She'd been planning for the contingency of the Hollow Earth insurgency ever since she'd gone back in time to 1898.

Nikola was _furious_. Not only because he'd been outwitted, outsmarted, but because it was kept from him when he was _so close to figuring it out_. His anger vibrated in his body, his magnetism pushing at the seams, pressing outward, making his body feel too small. Much of the joy of knowing she was alive was now subsumed by the anger that she could have told him. He didn't have to go through what he'd gone through. The fear, the despair, the loneliness – all of it. For absolutely nothing. Nikola crossed his arms. The sooner they finished up here, the sooner they'd leave, and he could extract the answers out of Helen. Why did she not tell him? What has she been doing thing whole time? Why didn't she come find them sooner?

His prayers were answered with a swell of water, tossed up on the beach. Not enough to cause harm, just enough to announce a change in the water level. The team erupted into quiet, nervous chatter, much to Nikola's chagrin. It was just a turtle.

_Something_ breached the surface out in the ocean, a black mass in the distance, barely visible even to Nikola's vampiric abilities. The water poured off in shimmers of grey, causing enormous ripples like tides, to come to the shore, reaching up further by several feet. It was, by his estimate, the size of a sports arena, black and enormous, rising in a great hump shape over the water.

“Dr. Magnus? What do we do?” asked a voice, some peon from the team he'd never met.

“What _is_ that?” “It's huge!” “What the hell!”

It was vast. A great black shape, rising from the depths. And slowly, two great orbs of greenish light shone, reflecting the light from the streets and from the lights that the team set up on the beach. Nikola started. Those were it's _eyes_ , those eerie globes floating in the lake. Which meant--

The shape rose up and the glowing eyes did too. That shape wasn't the creature. It was just the creature's head.

If the head was enormous, the body was _gargantuan_. It truly was the size of a small island, several kilometres long and at least a kilometre tall, approaching the beach fast, kicking up waves that were twice Nikola's height. Yet it was largely silent, save for the _woosh_ of the water, as it sliced through the waves and came toward the shore. As the name suggested, there was various bracken and vegetation growing out of the shell, spires of strange trees and weeds pulling in the wind, like tall dappled shadows in the dark. The eyes grew closer, sending a shiver down Nikola's spine.

They were too close. The waves alone would sweep over the whole beach and beyond, and pull them all out into the ocean, greedy and cold. Nikola walked, calm just to spite the world for putting a crimp in his style, to Helen's side. He'd be damned if he'd let Franklin here take her away from him when he just found her again.

She had the fierce determined look of a war general, a warrior goddess, her mouth pressed together and her eyes flashing daggers. The wave climbed up, mounting to over 20 feet, the sounds of the surrounding world sucked into the crash of the wave, whitehorses racing along the top. The crew erupted into gasps. Henry stared forward resolutely. Will straightened his back, his stunner at the ready.

“Get the stun web running! Team two, man the trenches! Everyone, dig in!” Will hollered over the cacophany of the breaking wave. Men scrambled, and Nikola followed Magnus into position. About half of the crew scrambled over to the trench, wildly kicking up sand. She pulled out a strange tool, pressing it to the sand, and she looked over at Nikola.

“Hang on, and don't let go,” she told him. Her finger squeezed the trigger of the tool and something green shot deep into the sand, granules spilling out in the displacement. She attached a carabiner from her vest to the tool.

Nikola jumped over behind Helen just as the wave crested over the edge of the beach, throwing his arms around her and holding tightly. Yet, he threw her his best cocksure smile, whispering in her ear.“Why Helen, you thought I'd do anything else?”

Helen chuckled mirthlessly as the shadow of the wave came over them, blacking out the stars. Yet there was something in her voice, small in the deafening crash that veered above, when she said, “maybe a little tighter, just to be safe.”

“ _If you were any more transparent, you'd be invisible,” he remembered. The map, the moment in the library. He could have sworn that her body had the slightest shake to it when she wrapped her arms around his waist. He looked over his shoulder to the sweetest smile he'd ever seen._ Nikola held on even tighter. 

The water came down in a cymbal crash of power, dousing Nikola in an icy percussive blast like a sonic boom. Ice shot through his veins from his skin to his heart and he _quailed_ , clutching to Helen; his lifeline, his best friend, his love. The dark was immense and immediate, his body shaking against the power, straining to hold fast, slipping minutely down Helen's waist. He felt a sudden _fire_ as his vampirism erupted, fighting against the water, to stand fast, to try and move over her so she wouldn't take the brunt of the weight of the water.

Then suddenly, it was over. They collapsed over the sand, coughing violently, as did most of the rest of the crew. Nikola looked down at the strange gun-shaped tool. It had a wide opening on the business-end, which was spilling out some kind of... plant. It was as if the thing had shot some kind of vegetation, pale green and sinuous, straight into the ground. He looked down at Helen to ask about it when his heart leapt somewhere into his throat. She was face down, a sprawled pile of coat and vest and hair underneath him.

_Oh God._ His hands flew to her, his heart threatening to beat right out of his ribcage. He dug his hands around her shoulder and waist to roll her over.

A coughing splutter erupted from her lips, which were coated with wet sand. She scrunched her face up when he heaved her to her feet, half to help her maintain her image, and half to reassure himself that she was breathing and alive.

Franklin had come to a halt, the enormous head taking up most of the closest dune in the beach, barely half a click away. The eyes were huge and round, blacker than night with an odd almost otherworldly shine from the pinprick reflections of the streetlamps and other city lights. The water splashed in and out, settling now that the enormous creature had, inexplicably, stopped its angry turtle tirade.

It simply sat there. Staring.

It was creepy.

“Magnus?” Will asked, looking to Helen with suspicion. “What's it doing?”

Helen had brushed herself off, and was more or less standing of her own accord. She tried to shrug off Nikola's hands, but he was in no mood to let go. Her crystal blue eyes held anger, until she met Nikola's. She softened, and he felt a hand wrap around his arm, giving a reassuring squeeze. Reluctantly, Nikola released her. It was important to her, he knew. She was very proud, not only of her ability to keep going, but she couldn't show weakness around her loyal followers. He would not, however, let her go far. She was just going to have to deal with that.

Helen turned to the turtle.

“Something isn't right,” she said, stepping toward the creature. Nikola rolled his eyes. Of course she'd choose this moment, standing next to a turtle the size of Vancouver Island, to be all mystical about it.

“This whole encounter isn't right, Helen! I say we turn Michelangelo,” Nikola gestured angrily at the creature, “into soup and call it a night!” Nikola snapped, matching her step for step.

“There isn't a soup-pot big enough!” Henry replied, hurrying over from team two, pulling his new vest closed after it had popped open from his HAPing.

“Well if we went to Texas, we--”

“Focus, Nikola!” Helen snapped.

Nikola was about to pout when he was interrupted. “Doc, we're detecting movement!” Henry shouted, his hand on his ear, “everyone brace!”

The tremors were terrible and huge, rocking much of Vancouver to the core. Buildings shook and groaned in the distance, barely audible over the trembling earth that shuddered under the power of massive fins. The creature was moving, somehow, but not laterally as far as Nikola could tell. It could even be burrowing, scooping out huge sweeps of water and sand with its enormous fins, throwing it into the air like huge wings of mud and froth. Helen snapped to attention. “Alright, enough is enough. Everyone, out of the water! Team one, now!” she yelled, moving away from the turtle and encouraging everyone else to do the same.

“Team one, go!” Will shouted, “Move! _Move!_ ” He wheeled his arm around, as the last of the team scrambled away and further up the beach, single-minded in their determination now that something –Helen-- had broken the spell. A group of six hung back to man the net. They fiddled with something before pressing a button and high-tailing it away as quickly as humanly possible. (Nikola scoffed internally. 'Humanly possible' wasn't saying much.)

There was a familiar scent of the zest of electricity, and suddenly, white bolts of power shot through the water, which forked and skittered in beautiful webs of white light. The net lit up, the electricity shrieking its way out, everywhere and nowhere; making Nikola's hairs stand on end from the sheer force. He threw his free arm in front of his eyes in a vain attempt to block out the brightness, but it seeped through his lashes and seared at his eyes. Though the net itself was too small to contain the creature, it was big enough to pump the whole shore with electricity, and it did; the entire bay had lit up. The net couldn't handle the charge, partially submerged in the risen seawater. With a terrific crackle and a _banggg_ , it shorted and went up in flames. The turtle all but convulsed with electricity, letting out a deep _basso_ cry of pain and anger. It swung its head dangerously, sweeping through many of the lights and knocking them into pieces. Those who weren't fast enough in their mad dash up the beach were clubbed, and went tumbling into the sand. Nikola felt a rush when he scented blood.

The turtle looked pissed. It surveyed them with a baleful look. Nikola inhaled. _Well... fuck._

 

 

.oOo.

 

 

“Bloody hell!” Helen cried out, dashing up the beach with her team close behind. She felt Nikola's presence like a shadow, never more than a foot away.

“So we've only pissed it off, as per usual!” Will called, as he wrapped his hand around another man's arm to heave him up the beach. Helen looked around. There were a few bodies laying crumpled on the ground, and Helen pleaded that they were simply stunned. Sand had sprayed everywhere, making the beach look much like the photographs she'd seen of the invasion in Normandy. What's worse, they'd not even made a dent with what they'd brought. There was no way they'd turn back the chelonioidea arborescens with the equipment they had. If she could have faced it in the middle of the ocean, they might have had a chance, a wider net, somewhere to take it, but right on the beach? With so many innocent people living within a scant kilometre?

She exchanged glances with Will. He made a face, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “Magnus, we need to pull out.”

Helen felt a snap of indignation. “No! If we don't turn back the chelonioidea, we could be sacrificing the entire coast!”

“Magnus, they'll be here soon! We can't turn it back, nothing we've done has made a scratch. We need to get out of here while we can. Before SCIU finds out you're still alive.” 

“And leave this very rare abnormal for them to find so they can turn it into their own portable island?” Helen snapped. Her mind was racing. They needed to clean up, and they needed to do it _now_.  She looked deep in Will's face, willing an answer to come to her. She glanced at Henry. His strengths lay in tracking, technology, and weaponry. “Henry, could you fix the net? Rig it to run a greater charge with more stopping power?”

“It's not enough,” Nikola said, walking swiftly from just behind her, moving a few steps toward the turtle. She turned her gaze on his face. He was looking at her with an odd look in his quick-silver eyes. He looked... blank. Resigned. “Enough electricity would stun your Mutant Ninja Turtle, all you need is a better source.” 

Helen very quickly put the pieces  together .  She stared at him with horror.  There was  a source that they had, that could do enough damage to stun the enormous turtle.  But it was impossible  now . Even if it was possible, it posed an enormous risk to Nikola. Her horror deepened suddenly, when the last block fell into place. Nikola and heroics had a sordid relationship. He never did anything without there being something to gain. There was nothing to gain by this, save  for time. He was offering to end this quickly so she could be away when SCIU came knocking. He was doing it  _ for her _ . 

But... Since when did she come first? When did she become someone to be protected? _Just when did I become a Sanctuary resident instead of the warden?_ she wondered, but she knew the answer straight away.  It was when she'd almost died. Will had changed, he was constantly on her heels, making sure she attended to herself as often as she did for others. Even here, Will was her mouthpiece. He'd already begun taking on extra responsibilities, planning for contingencies she hadn't seen, for some reason or another. And clearly, Nikola felt the same. However, there would be another time to tackle that. Right now, she had to stop Nikola from attempting the impossible. 

“No. Absolutely not.”

“It would work, Helen,” he replied, looking uncharacteristically serious. Will looked between the pair, quickly piecing two and two together, as she had done. Henry looked worried for his mentor, knowing full-well his reckless streak where Helen was concerned. 

“But you lost your electric abilities when you de-vamped yourself!” 

N ikola flashed a smile. “Well let's hope not all of them.” 

“Niko _laa_ ,” she chastened. “Don't be foolish.”

“Fools rush in where Helen Magnus fears to tread,” he replied, leaning in, looking very much like the proverbial cat who caught the canary. He took her hand a moment, looking right through her. A warm feeling rose within her, somehow. Some deep, rosy feeling that shifted, unfolding again and again, like a sheet in the breeze, seeping through her limbs like it was carried by her blood. It trickled down her arms, and into her hand, where she felt Nikola's fingers in hers, cool and smooth like marble. 

“Nikola,” she repeated, alarmed by the feeling. She glanced at their hands. _What was that?_

She felt his lips touch her forehead,  and a different feeling of warmth coursed through her, a feeling she'd long  suppressed. She looked up.

And he was gone. 

Henry looked stricken, looking down the beach to where Nikola had gone, but he pulled himself together. Helen watched his face as determination worked its way through, kneading out the creases in his forehead as he came to a decision. Her heart dropped into her belly, her hand shot out, and took his shoulder. She shook her head. If Nikola was going to make this work somehow, he needed everyone clear. What choice did they have? 

T he ground shook suddenly, pitching everyone forward. Helen heard herself cry out, amoung the many other voices. The ground was coming up fast, until she came to a halt with a sudden jerk in her arm, almost pulled out of the socket. Henry must have grabbed her, keeping her upright. She looked up, and helped Will off the ground. Wet sand coated his face, and was stuck in his curliques of hair,  which stood up in a determined cowlick. Helen smiled with mischief.  He looked ridiculous.

Massive fins threw more and more sand high into the night air, in strange muddy sheets.  The c helonioidea  arborescens  had begun to dig again. But why?  Why would a sea turtle come to land, only to burrow into the sand?

Helen could have smacked herself.  _ Of course _ . 

“The chelonioidea arborescens! It's nesting!”

“It's what-now?!” Henry shouted back over the roar of the fins. 

“It's burrowing to lay its eggs! If we don't stop it now, those eggs will hatch and hundreds of baby chelonioideas will emerge from the beach!”

“Are you serious!?” Will yelled, throwing up an arm against the rain of sand. Their retreat continued in earnest, all the way back to the edge of the road, well beyond the grass and bike paths. 

“You mean I've been preparing for the zombie apocalypse, just to find out it'll be a turtlepocalypse instead?!” Henry added, pulling Will by the arm. 

“We need to get the equipment!” Will insisted, looking as if he would go back himself. 

“No time!” Helen called in response. “Declan, come in!” 

“Here, Magnus, what the hell is going on out there?” he replied, the voice strangely clear in her earwig over the tremors and the sand. 

“Do we have any missiles?” 

“Not in the van,” he replied. 

Damn! “Any of the Sanctorium ships out in the area?” Though she didn't think there would be. “ A chopper nearby?”

“Nothing we can get in faster than half-an-hour,” he replied. “And computers are detecting movement, there's some unmarked trucks on the way. Could be SCIU, Magnus. Whatever you're going to do, you'd better do it fast.”

“Magnus!!” Will shouted, pointing at the giant turtle. 

T he c helonioidea  arborescens  had worked its way up the beach a little, the tide pushing up past the line of sand and was kissing the grass, washing out even some of the sidewalks. Nikola had somehow gotten out to the destroyed net, and was heaving something out from under the broken masts.  He was a tiny speck, discernible only by the way he moved. He was utterly dwarfed by the turtle. 

_ Just have faith, Helen, _ she thought to herself.  _ He's a vampire. It'll take more than a turtle to take out Nikola. _

He hauled out the something that he was trying to get, and he headed out into the water, his stride even. She could imagine the look on his face that said he was utterly bored by the predicament. She shook her head. How she hated standing on the sidelines!  The what-ifs began building in her head, crowding out her vision. 

Will put a hand on her shoulder. A comforting weight, it was. She slid hers up, holding desperately onto his.  He had a consoling look on his face. No lies, no deceit, not even false assurances. That was what she loved about Will, she could always count on his honesty.  Helen let herself get sidled in, Will on one side of her and Henry on the other. 

S he glanced back at the beach. Nikola was standing in the water now, holding what looked like a large battery, before the titan c helonioidea  arborescens.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alright, you colossal tartaruga,” he said, narrowly missing being hit by a particularly filthy wave of mud, “let's get cooking.” Nikola didn't wait for a moment. He quickly set his hand on the large brass cap, and felt, probing with his magnetism, hoping that it would somehow be enough, because he needed this to work...

 

Nikola stood, water up to his thighs, staring at the large battery he'd appropriated from the shorted net. He didn't consider that the battery might be completely dead from the initial water damage. It didn't occur to him for a moment that his half-thought-through plan might fail entirely, since he didn't even have those electrical abilities anymore. It was utterly unimportant. Trivial, even. He'd simply acted, spur of the moment. There was a problem, and this was the fastest solution.

Mud, sand, and water flew, and Nikola's clothes were beyond ruined. Perhaps Helen could write off his dry cleaning for tax purposes, he mused. Except that, legally, she's dead, and doesn't pay taxes. Maybe she'd get the Big Hairy One to give it a go. At least his hat may have survived, miraculously somehow still on Helen's head.

“Alright, you colossal _tartaruga_ ,” he said, narrowly missing being hit by a particularly filthy wave of mud, “let's get cooking.” Nikola didn't wait for a moment. He quickly set his hand on the large brass cap, and _felt_ , probing with his magnetism, hoping that it would somehow be enough, because he needed this to work. He could feel the incessant buzzing, the gentle scurry of caged electricity. The battery still had juice, somehow. Heartened, he closed his eyes, and reached deep in, pushing his ability into the battery itself, chasing the skitters of power, like mice constantly slipping through his fingers. He _tsked_.

“Come on, work with me,” he mumbled, almost oblivious to the surges of water quickly growing in size. But if he had to do this treading water, he would. After all, he was being watched. And Helen was depending on him.

With a deep breath, Nikola looked deep. Once this was as natural as breathing, and it should be now--

The water suddenly swamped him, coming in a huge wave clear over his head. It pushed him deep in, the black of the water covering the black of the sky, barely a whisp of light to even tell him which way was up. Nikola clutched the battery with one hand, and scrabbled desperately for purchase with the other. He felt his body sink, weighed down by the giant hunk of metal, which he didn't dare let go of. The weight and the black pressed in, like _smoke and ash and_ _solitude_ _\--_

_No!_

_Never again._

Nikola's feet found the sticky bottom of the beach, and he shot away in the direction that was – hopefully -- upward. The broad blackness broke in tiny whitehorses and he came up through the surface in a surge, fighting the urge to cough, though he did anyway. In the same moment, he felt a warmth begin to bubble somewhere in his chest. Nikola gave the enormous creature his best cocksure smile, complete with a raised eyebrow for good measure.

That strange feeling settled into his bones like the warmth of fresh blood, like a good brandy or a _cabernet s_ _auvignon_. It seeped and oozed, and shimmied through his limbs, until it pulled his every ounce of willpower toward the cold slick brass battery end in his hand. Something within him unlocked, a kink unfurled, and suddenly, there was lighting in his veins.

The tentative trickle of feeling from the battery blossomed into an electrical storm, jumping through his hand, his arm, his shoulders, his heart hips face knees feet and it was in the water, running through the currents and skittering, eating up the distance in jagged merciless hooks and tears in the deep black water. It cut through the waves, the masses, the ground, and the mud; and it lit up the bay like sunlight. The enormous creature let out a terrible cry, piercing the night with a gargantuan howl of pain and fury. It bucked backward, tossing geysers of water out to the shore, landing harmlessly in sprays of muddy rain.

“Oh yeah, baby!” Nikola shouted, wrapping his will around the voltage, nudging the arcs to jump toward his target. The pain was immense, ripping through his muscles and singing through his nerves like a crystal whine, but Nikola hadn't felt this alive since-- since-- since Bhalasaam! Vampirism was one thing, but this incredible, divine feeling! Better than sex!

An errant bolt of electricity skittered uncomfortably against his thigh. He jumped, surprised. Well, okay, there was that. But still, the _power_.

He was barely aware that the battery was dead, so he let it go, swept out into the ocean, and he dug in deep for the furthest vestiges of strength. Using this much strength after it being trapped within him for so long, locked in his DNA, was exhausting, but he held on. The great turtle gave a final howl and sent another wave crashing toward Nikola, and while not large enough to douse the coast as its first, it was more than enough to take the exhausted vampire out to sea without the strength to swim back. With a huge holler, the turtle shifted its huge body, and pushed away from the bay.

It was leaving.

Nikola held onto the power, forcing the last of his energy, his very life force, to sting at the turtle's proverbial heels. He held on to the bolts for as long as he could, until the last wave, a huge black wing that swept up like a scythe, rose to take him down. He exhaled loudly as the last of his energy jumped out of his body, like a rabid dog biting an intruder, dissipating uselessly into the water.

The blackness came up and over in a heartless crash.

 

 

.oOo.

 

 

The nose never lies.

Henry knew that there was an attraction between Helen Magnus and Nikola Tesla. I mean, normally, he was pretty oblivious to these kinds of things, but it was about as subtle as orange juice up your nose. Tangy, bright, and utterly awkward; yet really funny in retrospect. Even if the Doc didn't have feelings for that ultra annoying vampire man, Henry would still have done what he was about to do. But seeing the look of utter horror on her face when that last wave approached Tesla – that alone would have made Henry act.

It was instinct. There was no holding back, no half-HAP-ing, there was no time and he needed the strength to battle the wave. He let his form change, his molecules rearranging, as he began his mad dash toward the water.

“Henry!” he heard called behind him, both Will and the Doc. He let it go. Because at his heart, he was a Lost Boy, and Pan needed his help.

The muscles seized, but he pushed through, barely registering the muscle-spasm pain as he tore down the beach. His feet quickly elongated, his shoes sliding right off in his dash. He watched Tesla as the water came down, and it looked like he didn't even fight it that time. He was there, the water was there, and suddenly, Tesla was just gone. Henry let a reverberating growl of anger rumble around in his chest as his stride ate up the metres until the water's edge.

The water came quickly, even with the receding movement of the tide, likely taking Tesla's slack body out. If he sank too far, went too far, they would never find him. Not at night. Not if he didn't _damn well fight_ and come back up, that stubborn vamp. Henry picked the most likely spot, filled his lungs with air, and dove, his large canine body scraping the bottom in the shallow beach.

Henry grasped, grabbed, dug, until he could hold his breath no longer. He kicked off the ground to clear the foot or between his head and the surface. His lungs pulled air in, and he looked. He _smelled_ , the bracken and sea salt and the myriad of garbage scents from the pollution in the ocean from the shore. The sloshing tide jostled him about, as he looked around desperately.

“Tesla!!” he shouted, his voice more like a wolfish howl. “TESLA!!”

He glanced back at the beach. There were headlights coming around the bend at the top of the beach access, and the team was scattering, half toward the van and half toward the shore. _Crap_ , he thought, _SCIU's here._ He was running out of time. He was running out of time fast.

A slight movement grabbed his attention. Something pale, about fifty metres out. Hope sparked, and he latched on.

Henry swam, his powerful muscles propelling him quickly, if a little strangely, being part-wolf and part-human and therefore not perfect for swimming. Just as he approached, when that 'something pale' began to look more like a torso, it bobbed and wobbled, going under for the second time. Henry dove again, kicking furiously behind him, reaching down into the seaweed-y depths. The underwater growth floated about innocently, partially obscuring the long lean body that was currently sinking into it. Henry reached out, straining desperately. His body felt like ice; his lungs feeling like they were filled with flames.

His claw wrapped around what felt like it might be an elbow. He grabbed, odd stars filling his eyes, and as hard as he could, Henry started kicking up to the surface. The barest minimum of light danced there, what little the moon, stars, and bright city lights, could provide. Henry scooped water with his free arm and felt shooting pains jump through his body. The lights above began to darken...

Until the surface broke and he came up with a gasp. With a great howl, Henry heaved on the arm of the body, pulling it to the surface as well. Briefly, a thought slid through his mind; _I hope this is Tesla and not some random dead guy I'm dragging here_ , but even with the ruined clothes, he was unmistakable. Tesla's mouth hung slightly open, water sloshing uselessly out past his extended canines. His normally pale skin was blue with cold, splotchy and mottled with veins. His handsome hair plastered across his brow, dark against his skin making him look even more dead.

Henry winced. Not the right thought to have. He'd better not be dead, not after all this. Henry would never forgive the man. Ever. He patted the side of the vamp's face, awkwardly treading water.

“Come on, man, snap out of it,” he mumbled around his chattering teeth.

In the distance, there were shouts and commotion. A vehicle took off, stunner shots fired. But that was the direction of land, so that was the direction they'd go. He manoeuvred his burden until Tesla's head sat on his chest, his body floating oddly above Henry's, and he kicked, fumbling to keep Tesla's face more or less out of the water.

The bitter cold of the water was finally beginning to get to Henry, despite the warm fur covering his body. It crept into his skin, seeping into his bones, chilling him completely. It was gruelling, swimming through the cold. It chilled him even more when he realized the body he carried was just as cold as the sea. He kicked a little faster.

_Just keep swiiimmiing, just keep swiiimmiing,_ he thought to himself, trying to stop the growing dread of what was waiting on the beach. _What, do we do, we swiiiiiiiiiiiimmm--_

Henry's shoulders hit the sandy bottom and he could have cheered. “Oh sweet Jesus! Land!” he muttered, heaving his mentor's body further up. “Uhhhh my god. Seriously. First day back. This is insane.”

Footsteps thundered, then splashed through the shallow water. Will came up fast, Henry could tell from the smell of him, a vague mixture of musk, hairgel, and Will's natural scent of something like hops. “Henry, get up! We have to get out of here now!”

“Alllrighty,” he replied, “take him, get him to Magnus.”

“Magnus is gone, she got out in the van,” Will said, as the rest of his team (Henry vaguely recognized them as 'team two') appeared, staggering to a halt and out of breath, stunners at their sides. “Declan's got another ride on the way for us, but we're gonna have to hoof it down the way some. It's too open here, plus the beach is now covered with a bunch of unconscious SCIU soldiers.”

“Hm,” Henry replied, his voice pitched a bit too high, “that'll be awkward.” Henry began vainly trying to shift Tesla's body without completely dislodging him. Will took pity and helped slide the vamp off. “By the way, pretty sure that he's not breathing.”

Will made a face. “Can vampires drown?”

“Are you-- I don't want to find out!” Henry replied, the tones in his layered voice grating on each other in his irritation. “Also, I hope someone has spare pants.”

Someone that Henry didn't know from the team came forward with some kind of med-kit. Yeah, he _really_ hoped someone had some pants. It was freaking cold.

 

 

.oOo.

 

 

Helen was still growling to herself when the van pulled up to the meet point. _Those SCIU bastards!_ Helen thought, her foot tapping against the floor. _Those bastards!_ The feed through the earwig was utterly useless, full of unintelligible yelling and shots firing. If only those idiots hadn't shown up! Helen could be back at the beach. She could be doing something, instead of sitting here surrounded by tin walls like some sort of delicate damsel!

Her only consolation was that she only heard stunner shots. No live firearms, ideally meaning that no one was seriously hurt... Ideally. She hoped. If not, she'd personally waltz into SCIU headquarters and shoot them all herself.

“Ohh, enough of this!” she muttered. Helen stabbed at her seatbelt release. Naturally, it refused to give way as well. “Damn it!” she cursed, almost tearing the whole thing right off.

“Dr. Magnus?”

She looked up; it was the driver, a young man she'd recruited since the disaster. His brow was furrowed with something akin to sceptical worry, hiding under a long shaggy cut of sandy blonde hair. He had a black turtleneck that he wore almost up to his chin, which made his hazel eyes pop under his bangs.

“Yes, Robbie?”

Robbie Meyers had grown a great deal since her first encounter. He was no longer an adolescent, but a young man of twenty. When word had reached Helen's ear that Mrs. Meyers had fallen ill, she'd gone out of her way to find the small family and invite them to live in the Sanctorium. Robbie was more than capable, an eager hand and a fast learner. His enthusiasm had only been met by his brother's, Edward, who used his unique abilities to help the lab identify abnormals for pursuit or capture.

“You know that Will was right, eh Doc?” he said, looking over his shoulder.

Helen sighed. She's certainly been hearing a lot of that lately. She looked at him with a smile, half-hoping to prompt him into continuing, and half-wishing that the whole thing hadn't been brought up.

Robbie seemed to take it as a sign of encouragement, for he continued tentatively. “I know you wanted to stay to see it through to the end, we all knew that. But you'd be putting your new Sanctuary at stake. It'll be good with Will. He knows what he's doing.”

It was true – as long as the authorities thought Helen was dead, they'd never think to look for the Sanctorium. Even this was risky, leaving Will. But it was better for them to believe that Will was carrying on Helen's work on the surface than for them to see Helen herself. After all, the Sanctorium was more than just another Sanctuary. Helen and her crew worked with the Hollow Earth abnormals, as something of a port of call. It was quite isolated from the Surface, but there were often visitors from the tribes there. The Sanctorium was quickly becoming the underground equivalent to the UN, with the added benefit of surface-access for those with permission from the newly-founded Great Council of the tribes.

Helen's heart had almost jackhammered right out of her chest when she'd watched Henry race out to save Nikola from the wave. Then Will was shouting in her ear, and she was being bustled away from the action before the approaching vans got a chance to get a count of her team. She knew in her heart that she had to have faith in Nikola and Henry, that she couldn't forever force outcomes in her favour, but--

It was bad for her blood pressure.

And... she had _just_ gotten them back. Helen took in a deep breath, and let it out in a smooth stream. Then, she looked Robbie in the eye. He really had grown up a lot. There was a gleam of something in his expression, some kind of clever sense of perception. Perhaps it was part of his abnormality, his ability to catalogue details and reproduce them. Maybe he could see beyond the veil a little, like his little brother.

She could only nod, smiling sadly. He seemed to understand, and he turned back to the wheel.

“Well,” he said, leaning out his window to tweak his side mirror, “we wait another ten minutes. If Will's not back by then, we head back to Hollow Earth.”

Helen looked out her window. She didn't like it. At all. But it was the plan.

_Just have faith..._

 

 

.oOo.

 

 

Will lead the team further down the beach, sweeping his glance across the beach for the millionth time. Declan was late. Dawn would be approaching soon. He had to turn off his phone, so he didn't know if things had gone well for Abby. A humanoid-Henry was shivering in a shock blanket with blue lips and fingers showing the first inklings of frostbite. Tesla seemed to be breathing, but had yet to come back into conciousness.

There was so much that could go wrong here, if Declan didn't show up. He looked out at the street, seeing empty streets, save for the SCIU vehicles which lay empty. If those guys didn't report in soon, they'd be in real trouble...

Henry started, looking up the hill into the town. _He sensed something,_ Will surmised. ( _Vehicle? Declan/emergency response/police/SCIU backup/pedestrians/unknown quantity?_ )

Before Will could ask, Henry met his eyes. “A big van, one of the axles is squeaky.”

_Oh thank fuck._ “That's Declan then. You two!” Will gestured at the team members nearest to the prone vampire. “I need you guys to get him into the van. Henry?” Will came over, clapping a companionable hand on his friend's shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm good,” he replied, in a valiant attempt to hide his chattering teeth.

Will made a half-grimace. He'd really rather not leave his friend's side, given all they'd just gone through, but he didn't have much of a choice. He turned his grimace into a wide smirk. “Alright, you're the first into the van. Then you stay there, okay?”

 

 

 

.oOo.

 

 

_He looked at Henry with dead eyes, then back at the flames... There was a tablet in his hands, all sharp edges and corners, biting into his palms as he clung to it. The last line, his last chance, his last_ mistake _that he clenched onto until he bled. The sparks flickered and jumped, throwing shadows into the wreckage. Sparks like heartbeats, thready and weak. If only he'd stayed, if he'd not listened, if he'd just..._

Nikola cried out as he jerked out of a deep and troubling sleep. The remnants of his nightmare quickly fading, but they had been burned into his memory. He shuddered to think it. Anything _burning_ made him remember that terrible, terrible night. The night where he'd lost --

“Don't think about that,” Nikola muttered, a mantra against the wide chasm that stretched him open from shoulder-to-shoulder. Somewhere, the heart he'd long denied he even had ended up at the bottom of that chasm.

He took in his surroundings. Not his shabby apartment. It was... almost Victorian, even despite the lack of fripperies. The first thing he noticed was the canopy, because of _course_ he would wake up in a four-poster bed. The draperies were twofold; a deep red exterior, and a sandy colour gauze, pale in comparison to the deep mahogany of the posts. A large window lay to the right, swathed in more sand-coloured drapes, though the curtains were closed obscuring his view (and therefore his chance to orient himself.) His bedside table was elegant, but simple. A lamp with a cream shade sat there. His legs were trapped in the thick duvet and accompanying sheets, the blanket on top a rich red with a bronze embroidered pattern of long elegant lines.

Nikola reached to look for the switch on the lamp, but it activated by proximity. He chuckled and shook his head. Only Helen. Only Helen would put a Victorian lampshade on a lamp that activated by proximity. Even the light itself felt a little wrong, it was the wrong shade of white to have ever suited the lamp itself. It was a combination of old and new technologies. Somehow, that did a lot to ease his nightmare.

Then he remembered. _The wave coming over his head, the electricity surging through his nerves, the giant abnormal turtle, Helen and Henry standing on the beach..._

He was up at once, fumbling for purchase on the floor, still trapped in the blankets. With a huff, he extracted himself as quickly as he could without tearing the damn things, and found his way to the door. He threw it open with a great sense of drama, took a step outside, and stared. Seamless walls with small lights in the ceiling, which shone heatlessly into the strange bending hallway. His door was one of many, carved intricately and stained, with antique handles. Again, the juxtaposition of Victorian and Praxian jarred Nikola.

He knew where he was. He _must_ be in the Hollow Earth Sanctuary.

“Well I must say, you've looked better,” came a voice. Nikola whipped around, to see Helen closing a door, a few rooms down the hall, a tiny smile on her face.

Nikola quirked an eyebrow. “Yes, well. You could have chosen a better Abnormal to subject us to for our first mission back. Something a little less--” Smelly. Monstrous. Covered in salty bracken. “Big.”

Helen's small smile split into a wide grin, her crystal eyes shining. “You seemed to have it under control.”

Before he knew quite what he was doing, his legs were eating up the distance between them and he suddenly found Helen so close that he could hear her smooth even breath. Almost imperceptibly, Helen's weight shifted, ever so slightly, inward. A shiver of wonder ran up Nikola's spine. A delicious jolt of electricity. Or something very much like it.

Nikola took in her eyes, under the full light. There was no nighttime to hide in, no large jacket, no sudden disasters, or disruptions. Her lips parted, coloured faintly from a neutral lipstick of some kind. She was wearing a dark, form-fitting keyhole dress, otherwise unadorned. Her arms were covered, in a strange (yet very Helen) combination of demure and unashamed, of put-together and effortlessly-comfortable. His blood began to race as his eyes took in her almost-scandalously bare legs. Smooth and creamy, and completely-- Nikola stopped when his eyes reached her feet.

He looked up again. “Helen, where on earth are your shoes?”

A faint blush crept into her cheeks, but her expression remained unchanged. “Well I couldn't exactly catch up to a vampire with stilettos on, could I?”

Nikola chuckled. “If anyone could, I suspect it would be you.” A moment's hesitation melted under the warmth of her smile, and Nikola melted right along with it. He drifted into her, his lips catching hers on the edge. He smiled into her mouth, and readjusted, pulling her into his arms.

He didn't even realize that he'd been afraid that Helen would pull away until he was surprised that she didn't. Instead, she tipped her head and leaned into the sweet kiss. His blood _sang_ , zipping through his veins in joy. She was _here,_ she was with him, he wasn't _alone_. Her lips were soft and pliant under his, filling him with a sense of ( _vanilla/cinnamon/home during the holidays_ ) comfort. Nikola let his hands slide down from her back to her sides, and was rewarded with a wonderful sense of shivering and deepening. He felt lost in her lips like he felt lost in the wonder of a sky full of stars and mysteries.

She pulled away, like a receding tide, only to come sweeping in again, smothering him with another kiss. Nikola felt her pushing gently, walking him backwards until his back was pressed into the wall, her arms circling his neck, her hand on the back of his head, pulling him in. Everything about Helen was like gravity. Ever since he'd first espied her travelling across the grounds at the college, he'd been drawn to her. Everyone was.

And here she was.

With him.

At last.

“Nikola?” she whispered, leaning into his ear. His entire body shuddered like a sail full of wind.

“Yeah?” he replied, the Queen's English suddenly all but evaporated from the heat of her lips on his but moments ago. Her hands trailed through his hair, gently running down the shell of his ear, down his jaw, and to his chin. She tipped his chin until his eyes met hers straight on.

“Welcome home.”

Nikola's knees almost gave out. He gave a small smile. “It's good to be home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there we go! My first fanfiction in a long time. A long, long time. I have plenty more in my brain where this came from, so if you're curious about the Sanctorium (like, where on earth did Nikola's lightning abilities come from? What's going to happen with the SCIU people who came to the beach? Did Erika and Abby make it through alright?) and where all this is going, stay tuned in for the next installment! 
> 
> Thank you all for your support, you've been lovely!


End file.
